I lose my keys at occasionally, I overthink, nearly everything; conversations that happened in 2019. I say yes when I mean no, and no when I mean yes, and sometimes I genuinely cannot locate either answer. I leave half my thoughts mid-air like sentences that lost their nerve, the research what they meant. I second-guess the weather, and I lie awake cataloguing every small, unfinished wrong as though somewhere there is a ledger, and someone, somewhere, is keeping very thorough score.

I am, in other words, magnificently and triumphantly imperfect.

You probably are too.

Welcome, pull up a chair; this one is for us.

We have been sold, for most of our lives, a rather persistent lie.

The lie goes something like this: that the goal is to get it together, to have your ducks in a row, to reach some future, more organised, more competent, less chaotic version of ourselves, at which point we will finally be worthy of the love and the friendship and the life we have been quietly wanting. The imperfection, we are told, is the obstacle. The thing to be tidied up before the good stuff can begin.

It is, I am delighted to report, complete nonsense.

Dr Brené Brown has spent over two decades studying vulnerability, shame and human connection, and what she found, consistently, across thousands of interviews, is that the people who experience the deepest love and belonging are not the ones who got everything right. They are the ones who believed they were worthy of love and belonging despite getting things wrong; because of it, even, how utterly beautiful!

Dr Kristin Neff, whose quiet work on self-compassion has rather revolutionised psychology, gives this a name. She calls it common humanity: the recognition that suffering, struggle and imperfection are not personal failures. They are the most universal thing about us, the single thread running through every human being who has ever lived. When we treat our own glorious messiness with contempt, we are essentially handing back our membership of the human race.

Which seems, on reflection, a terrible waste.

Here is the part I find most interesting.

The very vulnerability that makes us feel most exposed, the spilled thing, the lost key, the 3am spiral that arrives uninvited and stays far too long, is the precise thing that makes genuine soul to soul intimacy possible. You cannot be truly known by someone who only ever sees your polished version. There is no warmth in marble, you can only be truly loved by someone who has seen the rest of you and decided, with full information, to stay.

And that decision, that staying, is one of the most remarkable things one human being can do for another.

I heard something recently that I have not been able to shake.

It was about friendship, about what separates a great friend from a merely pleasant one; and the answer, delivered with the quiet certainty of someone who has thought about it properly, was this:

The best friends allow the maximum amount of your own character and your own reality to find an echo in them. There is a kind of complicity, it is like they are saying: I know you are not a perfect person, I know you are not always competent. I know you do not always know what is going on, and that is okay with me.

I read that and sat very still for a moment.

Because I recognised it immediately, not as an ideal to aspire to. As a person, several people, actually. The ones who have seen the frayed threads and the wonder and the art of me, and instead of stepping quietly backwards, pulled up a chair.

That kind of friendship is not common, it is, in fact, rather rare. But it is the only kind worth having, and I suspect you know exactly who yours is.

There is a Japanese art form called kintsugi.

When a piece of pottery breaks, kintsugi does not hide the repair or pretend the crack was never there. It fills it with gold. The broken places become the most luminous part of the object. The history of its breaking becomes its beauty.

I have thought about this a great deal.

Because I think people work exactly the same way, the ones I love most are not the ones who have never cracked. They are the ones whose cracks are golden. Visible, honoured, worn without shame and, frankly, rather magnificent.

We are all, as it turns out, kintsugi, and we are all gold in the broken places.

We have simply been taught to call it damage.

I wrote this poem recently.

I wrote it for a friend, but then I realised I was writing it for everyone.

You Are My Kind of Person

I know you do not have it all together. I know some days you barely do. I know you second-guess the weather and most of your decisions too.

I know you spill things, lose your keys, leave half your thoughts mid-air. I know your mind hums endlessly with did I, should I, was that fair.

I know the nights that stretch too long, when sleep slips quietly away, when every small, unfinished wrong comes back with more to say.

And I know how you gather yourself, piece by quiet piece, and try, by slow and tender degrees, to set the crooked edges right.

Here is what I need to say. The truest thing I know:

I recognise every inch of this.

And I choose you.

Because the finest kind of friendship is not polished, perfect or bright. It is muddy boots left in the hallway. It is laughter that spills into night.

It is kitchens gone golden with talking, tea cooling soft in your hands, the silence that needs no explaining, the being completely understood.

It is someone who has seen the whole of you, the frayed threads, the wonder, the art, and instead of stepping quietly backwards has pulled up a chair by your heart.

Held out a cup of something warm. Smiled. And stayed.

You are my kind of person. And I am so glad it is you. 🌿

Mimi G 🌿

So here is what I want to leave you with.

Somewhere out there, quite possibly reading this in their pyjamas with cold tea and the vague sense that they should be doing something more productive, is a person who is convinced they are too much of a mess to be truly loved, to get that job, to be... Who is performing competence and togetherness because they have come to believe it is the price of admission. Who is, frankly, exhausted by the effort of keeping up the performance.

I want to say something directly to that person.

You are not too much of a mess.

You are precisely the right amount of human.

Your frayed threads are part of the weave, your 3am spirals are evidence of a heart that cares deeply about things worth caring deeply about. Your lost keys and half-finished thoughts and second-guessed decisions are not your worst qualities: They are, rather wonderfully, your most relatable ones.

The right people, your people, will not love you in spite of them.

They will pull up a chair because of them.

Nobody has it together.

It turns out that was never the point.

This week’s prompts

For the imperfect, the complicated, the gloriously human.

Think of the person in your life who has seen you most honestly. What did they see, and what did they choose to do with it?

Where in your life are you still performing perfection or trying to? What would it cost you to put it down?

What is one thing about yourself that you have always called a flaw, that might actually be the most interesting thing about you?

Who in your life is the muddy boots in the hallway kind of friend? Have you told them lately what that means to you?

What would you say to a friend who described themselves the way you describe yourself on your worst days?

If this found you at the right moment, send it to your person. The one who pulls up a chair, I feel they deserve to know what they are.

And if you would like to come a little closer, the quieter room is always open.

With love, cold tea, and magnificently imperfect arms, Mimi 🌿

Publishes twice a month. Written by Mimi G — poet, thinker, and firm believer that feeling everything is not a flaw. It is, in fact, the whole point. 🌿

My mother called me oversensitive.

She did not mean it kindly.

It was offered the way certain mothers offer things; as a diagnosis. A small, precise unkindness wrapped in the language of concern. As though the problem were not the world, or her, or the distance between us, but the unreasonable sensitivity of the child standing in front of trying to hide her feelings again.

I was young enough to believe her.

For a long time I carried it as a verdict, I still check myself, but as the year pass I am proud to be an emotional being, to grant myself permission to feel for others: I genuinely believe our homes, streets, workplaces etc would be better in every way if we empathy was spread thicker amongst human kind.

The girl who felt too much, who needed too much, who should, by now, have learned to feel less.

It took me the better part of four decades to understand that she was wrong.

Not that I say this with bitterness; I have done enough of that work, in enough quiet rooms, to have moved beyond it into something that feels more like clarity than anger.

But she was wrong.

Because sensitivity is not a flaw in the system.

It is the system.

I have been thinking about empathy a great deal this week.

Partly because of the state of the world; the hardening of it, the way cruelty has learned to dress itself up as strength, the way we are collectively being asked to find acceptable what is not acceptable, to look away from what deserves to be seen.

And partly because of something much closer and much more devastating, which I am not yet ready to write about fully, but which has reminded me, in the most brutal way possible, that empathy is not a soft option.

It is the bravest thing there is.

To feel what another person feels, to let it land, to not look away, now that is true strength and bravery.

In a world that is increasingly rewarding numbness, choosing to remain feeling is a radical act.

The neuroscience, if you are someone who finds comfort in the science of things, is quietly extraordinary.

Research from Stanford, from the Journal of Happiness Studies, from decades of work by psychologists like Gordon Flett tells us something we perhaps already knew in our bones: feeling seen, truly seen, truly mattering to another person, is not a luxury.

It is a biological need.

The brain responds to being truly known the way it responds to warmth; to food, the same neural pathways, the same ancient circuits. We are, quite literally, wired to need each other’s attention, each other’s care, each other’s simple acknowledgement that we are here and that it matters.

When someone tells you that you matter; genuinely, specifically, with their whole attention; something in you shifts at a cellular level.

And the reverse is also true.

When empathy is absent, when the person who should have seen you looked straight through you, the wound my friend is not metaphorical.

It is physiological.

It lives in the body.

For those of us who grew up in its absence, we know this not as theory but as lived experience. The child who learned to read the temperature of a room before they entered it. Who turned thier own dial down because they were told the volume of her feeling was inconvenient. Who spent years believing that her sensitivity was the problem, when it was eyes seeing clearly what needed to be seen

It was never the problem.

It was always the gift.

Empathy

I look at the stars and the sea, the lemon that softens my tea, at the quiet, miraculous breath gifted so softly to me.

For all of this living and light, for the grace stitched gently through days, I cannot quite fathom the heart that chooses to look the other way.

The ones who walk straight through a sorrow as though it were wind in the street, who hear someone sinking beside them and never once feel a ripple.

A soul stands trembling in rain. The sky holds her breath for a moment. The clouds seem to know. Yet you remain the same.

For each of us carries a weather no stranger can fully see, and kindness is simply remembering that their storm could one day be me.

Could you not pause for a moment, one quiet second in time, and place your heart inside another’s as simply as rhythm finds rhyme?

Imagine the bruise of their morning, the weather their worn heart knows, the weight of the days they are carrying.

Then stop. Breathe.

How would it feel if it were you?

Mimi G 🌿

I wrote this poem standing at my kitchen window, watching the light do something extraordinary to an ordinary morning.

And I thought of all the people who would have noticed that light, those who can not feel the light, those who would love the choice to. Those who would have felt it, who would have stood there a moment longer than necessary, just to be in it..

And then I thought of the ones who wouldn’t.

Who would have walked straight past it.

Who walk straight past everything.

I just do not understand those people. I do not say that with superiority; I genuinely, after all these years, cannot fathom the architecture of a heart that does not feel the pull of another person’s pain. That does not register the trembling. That remains, in the face of someone else’s storm, entirely the same.

My mother was one of those people.

I spent a long time trying to understand it, longer still forgiving it, and I have arrived, finally, at something I can only describe as a kind of quiet bewilderment, not anger, not grief exactly, just the plain, persistent inability to comprehend how you move through the world and feel none of it.

Because I feel all of it, and I am glad.

The girl on the bus who is trying not to cry. The man at the checkout who has been standing too long on feet that are hurting. The friend who says she is fine in a particular tone of voice that means the opposite of fine.

I feel it, it lands, it matters, you matter.

And I have decided, finally and completely, thank the lord, to wear that as a crown.

If you were told you were too much; too sensitive, too feeling, too soft, I want you to hear this clearly:

You were not too much.

You were exactly right.

The world is not diminished by your tenderness.

It is held together by it, you are the mortar in the cracks of human kind.

This week’s prompts

For the ones who feel everything.

When did you first learn to turn your sensitivity down — and who taught you to?

Where in your life are you currently witnessing something you have been asked to normalise — and how does that feel in your body?

Think of someone in your life who truly sees you. When did they last know that?

Is there someone whose storm you have noticed but not yet stood beside? What would it take to show up?

What would change if you stopped apologising for the size of your heart?

What does it mean to you to carry a weather no stranger can fully see — and who in your life has ever truly felt yours?

If this letter found you at the right moment, please send it to someone who needs permission to feel everything.

That is how these things travel.

And if you would like to come a little closer; the quieter room is always open.

With love and a still-beating, wide-open heart, Mimi 🌿

I publish twice a month, sometimes more. Written by Mimi G; poet, thinker, and firm believer that feeling everything is not a flaw. It is, in fact, the whole point. 🌿

I carried it for years the way you carry certain things; not consciously, not displayed, but present; a quiet compass in the pocket of everything I did that keeps circling through the seasons.

..and then the world began to change this year..

Or perhaps the reality is that the world did not change so much as it revealed itself; loudly, daily, in ways that are increasingly difficult to look away from, I have always found it hard to turn a blind eye to the unjust: The normalisation of cruelty, the applause for unkindness dressed as strength. The lies repeated so often they have worn, as I wrote recently, the easy coat of fact. Leaders who confess in daylight to things that ought to finish them; and nothing happens… The crowd recites it like gospel.

I found myself returning to Kipling, reading it again, and really feeling its bones.

And then feeling something else; a kind of loving argument with it.

Because Kipling’s If— was written for a son… For a boy becoming a man in a particular kind of world, in a particular kind of empire, with a particular kind of stoicism at its centre. If you can keep your head; controlled, upright, unshaken.

And I wanted to write something for the rest of us.

For the ones who were not entirely comfortable to hold stoicism as a constant virtue, I have no doubt there is a ‘time and a place’. For the men and women who were told their feeling were weakness: For everyone; man, woman, anyone; who has looked at the state of the world right now and felt the particular exhaustion of trying to stay soft inside it.

For those who wonder, quietly, in the middle of the night, whether tenderness is still a reasonable response to what we are witnessing, and yet ironically despairing at the lack of heart.

I want to tell you: it is the only reasonable response.

This is the poem I wrote. It is called If - You Can Keep Your Heart; because that, I think, is the harder and more radical act.

Not keeping your head, but Keeping your heart.

If You Can Keep Your Heart

If you can keep your heart when all around you.

The world grows loud with anger, fear and blame, When liars wear the crown and call it honour, and truth is bent to serve a louder name;

If you can trust the quiet voice within you. When every shouting screen insists you’re wrong, and make some space for those who stand beside you and choose, in spite of everything, to carry on;

If you can watch the madness dressed as wisdom, and cruelty applauded as the strong, Yet keep a stubborn tenderness about you, and guard the fragile mercy in your heart;

If you can hear a lie repeated daily until it wears the easy coat of fact, and hold your steady compass through the clamour, and choose the slower, truer, kinder act;

If you can see the crowd grow numb to kindness, and still refuse to let your spirit harden, If you can meet with heartbreak and with wonder, and treat them both as teachers in the garden;

If you can love in rooms that do not earn it, and stay soft in a world grown hard and strange, and give your gentlest self without conditions Then rise again when everything must change;

Then know this: you are not foolish for believing, nor naïve for the hope you carry still. The ones who keep on loving through the breaking, are those the world will trust again; and will.

For power fears the quiet strength of people who will not let their tenderness depart, and when the noise has faded from the story,

what saves the world is one brave, stubborn heart.

And more than crowns or fame or passing glory;

you leave this Earth more gentle than you found it.

Mimi G 🌿

A note before you go.

I am not naïve about the world, I have lived close enough to darkness to know it is real, and heavy, and often very close.

But I have also lived long enough to know that the people who hold things together; quietly, consistently, without applause, are never the loudest ones in the room.

They are the ones who stayed soft when everything asked them to harden. Who chose the slower, truer, kinder act when the faster crueller one was easier. Who kept on loving through the breaking.

I believe that is most of us.

I believe that is you.

If this letter found you at the right moment; please forward it to someone who needs it.

That is how these things travel.

One quiet act at a time.

And if you would like to come a little closer; there’s a quieter room waiting. Paid subscribers receive the full prompt set, my margin notes, and occasional voice recordings of new poems before they go anywhere else.

Details below, thank you for being here!

With love and a stubborn heart, Mimi 🌿

This week’s prompts

For the ones trying to stay soft.

Where in my life am I working hardest to keep my heart open; and what is making it difficult?

What would it mean to choose the slower, truer, kinder act in one situation I am currently facing?

Who in my life models quiet, consistent tenderness; and have I ever told them?

When did I last let the world harden me a little; and do I want to carry that?

What does stubborn tenderness look like in practice, for me, this week?

It is not usually delivered by anyone you know, it comes instead from the ether, the cultural chorus, the collective insistence that the calendar has turned and therefore you must, too: New year, new habits, new body, new focus, new you. The whole thing can feel suspiciously like a performance review conducted by strangers.

I am trying something else, and invite you to join me.

I am not entering this year with a list of improvements, I am entering it with a wish, that every day is a new chance and to opportunity to find moments of joy. This one small wish is small enough to carry, and true enough to keep.

Here is the insight, if you like one.

Our nervous systems do not respond well to being bullied into transformation. They respond to safety, and they soften when we feel held. They steady when we stop treating rest as a reward and start treating it as a requirement. If you have lived through anything hard, your body does not need a motivational speech, but it needs evidence that you are safe now. Gentle rituals are one of the simplest ways to provide that evidence.

So, rather than making grand promises to become shinier and more efficient, I wrote a poem, it is a quiet blessing for the year ahead, and it is for you, if you are arriving in 2026 feeling a little different. It is for you, if you are arriving hopeful. It is for you, if you are arriving both at once.

I recorded a shorter spoken version as a Reel, and I will link it below. But I wanted the full words to live here, where you can read them slowly.

New Year, Round and Kind

This year, I wish you roundness,
soft edges, gentle grace,
the kind that lets you breathe again
and rest back in your place.

I wish you pink in quiet ways,
in jumpers, cheeks, and skies,
the sort that doesn’t shout for proof
but glows when no one tries.

I wish you animals at your feet,
warm fur and knowing eyes,
the comfort of a body near
that loves without disguise.

I wish you tea that tastes like pause,
and mugs held in two hands,
slow sips between the busy thoughts
that finally understand.

I wish you walks where fields unfold,
with hedges stitched in green,
and paths that lead you somewhere new
you hadn’t planned or seen.

I wish you lie-ins without guilt,
and yoga stretching time,
your breath finding its own calm pace,
your spine remembering its rhyme.

I wish you chats that get a bit messy,
gritty, honest, real,
the kind where truth arrives unpolished
and still gets time to heal.

I wish you laughter with your friends,
surprise arriving late,
the joy of not accounting for
what cancels out or waits.

I wish you love that feels like home,
not effort, not a test,
the kind that meets you where you are
and lets you be your best.

I wish you sea on bare, brave feet
(at least three times this year),
cold shock, sharp breath, a shouted laugh,
life ringing loud and clear.

I wish you sleep that holds you tight
right through until the morn,
and mornings that arrive like gifts
quietly reborn.

No grand resolve.
No fixing plans.
Just joy that knows your name.

Happy New Year.
May it come softly,
round and kind,
and call you into joy again. 💗🌊✨

mimi.g x

If you would like to hear the spoken version, you can watch the Reel here:

If you are the sort of person who finds January a little loud, I hope this offers a quieter room inside it.

If you feel moved to, tell me this; what is one thing you want more of this year? Not a goal, not a metric: Just something that makes your body unclench.

Thank you for being here.
Mimi x

Dear reader,

Imagine this.

You arrive somewhere unfamiliar.

You are not afraid; just slightly unsure.

The people you loved who have already gone are there, smiling the way loving parents do at half past four, when you come in from school with the day still clinging to your shoes.

They do not ask what you achieved, they do not bring a clipboard.

They ask one simple thing.

“How did it go?”

This is the question at the heart of my poem What Will You Tell Them? It is framed as a moment in the afterlife, but it is really a question for the living.

Because when we imagine answering honestly, many of us notice something uncomfortable.

We talk first about work.

Money.

Security.

How hard it was.

Who hurt us.

How we endured.

We speak as if life were a report card.

That instinct is not a personal failing; but It is conditioning.

What Will You Tell Them

What Will You Tell Them?

She arrives with a sigh she has held for years,

a lifetime folded in ribs filled with might-haves and fears.

A banner above her drifts soft into view:

Welcome home, darling.

We’ve waited for you.

They smile like parents at half-past four,

when you come in from school

with the day still stuck to your shoes on the floor.

“Well?” they ask gently.

“How was it, my love?

How did it all feel

from down there below

and from up there above?”

She laughs, without heat,

just tired and true.

“Well…

I worked every day.

Bought the dream they all do.

Never quite rich, never fully secure,

Always a little behind, never wholly sure.

Someone always above me, appraising, askew

an ex or a boss

or a man who called fear ‘love’ and thought it the truth.

Letters with teeth, little cuts dressed as law,

Salt finding old wounds

then finding some more.

So you ask how I lived?”

She shrugs, eyes unfurled.

“I endured.

I got through.

I survived the world.”

The room settles quiet.

Not shocked.

Just still.

One steps closer.

“Oh love…

is that really the whole of it?

Really the hill?”

They turn her toward skies she had failed to behold,

To sunsets laid daily

in amber and gold.

“To the trees,” they say softly,

“who asked nothing of you,

Who stayed through the seasons

while waiting you through.

To the friends who chose you,

on ordinary days,

To the loves who remained

in unspectacular ways.

To the rooms that grew lighter

the moment you laughed,

To the trace that you left

without noticing that.”

They ask, almost smiling,

“If we’d made you rich,

Would you have looked up more?

Would abundance have fixed it?

If we’d given you status,

a postcode, a crown,

Would joy have been easier

to spot coming round?”

She feels it then

slow and bright in her chest

the ache of the truth

and the grace in the rest.

One leans in and whispers,

steady and kind,

“My girl,

life was never a ledger of gain over time.

Not a race, not a scorecard,

not something you won.

You were never meant just to make it through.

You were meant to live.

You were meant to love.

You were meant to be you.”

She wakes in her bed

with the light on the wall,

the room unchanged

yet altered in all.

And somewhere that question

still waits, warm and near:

When they ask how it went,

what will you tell them, my dear?

mimi.g

Capitalism, Survival, and the Metrics We Learned to Use

Modern life has trained us to measure our worth through capitalist metrics: productivity, income, status, property, progress.

Neuroscience shows us that the brain prioritises whatever appears to keep us safe. When approval, belonging, and security are repeatedly linked to output and success, the nervous system treats them as survival needs, not preferences.

So when someone asks, “How was your life?”

the mind reaches for what was counted.

Not because it mattered most; but because it was measured most often by society.

This is why, in the poem, she answers with scarcity before wonder and with survival before meaning: She has learned to treat her life like a ledger rather than a landscape.

What the Brain Forgets to Count

Psychological research into wellbeing consistently shows that meaning, connection, autonomy, and presence predict fulfilment far more reliably than wealth or status.

Yet these things are quiet.

They do not announce themselves.

They ask to be noticed.

Under chronic pressure or comparison, the brain narrows its focus. It scans for threat, deficiency, and proof. It does not linger naturally on sunsets, trees, friendship, or laughter filling a room.

So the figures in the poem gently redirect her gaze.

Not toward what she failed to do,

but toward what she failed to see.

Ancestral Threads We Carry

There is also something ancestral moving through this poem.

Many of us inherited beliefs formed in times of real scarcity: war, poverty, displacement, instability. For those generations, security was survival. Owning something meant safety. Falling behind meant danger.

That wisdom kept people alive.

But it does not always let people live.

Those instincts can linger in our nervous systems long after the original threat has passed. They show up as urgency, comparison, and the sense that rest or joy must be earned.

The poem does not judge this, but thanks it.

And then it asks whether we are allowed to widen the lens now.

Before You Write

Before you read on, pause with me for a moment.

This is not a task.

You do not need to be eloquent, insightful, or brave here.

If you can, place one hand on your chest.

Notice that you are breathing, even if you did not plan to be.

Allow your exhale to be slightly longer than your inhale, just once or twice.

You are not trying to fix your life in the next few minutes.

You are simply listening to it.

These questions are not designed to produce impressive answers.

They are here to help you notice what your nervous system already knows,

but rarely gets asked.

If nothing comes, that is an answer too.

If something feels tender, go slowly.

This is not about what your life looks like; it is about what it feels like.

When you are ready, begin wherever the truth is kindest.

Journaling Prompts

Take one. Take all. Take breaks.

1. The Recalibration Prompt

If someone who loves me deeply asked, “How is your life really going?” what would I answer first and why?

Notice whether you speak in achievements, struggles, identities, or endurance.

This is information, not judgment.

What has taught me to speak about my life this way?

2. The Joy Beneath Productivity Prompt

What brings me genuine joy when no one is watching, measuring, praising, or paying?

Not what distracts you from exhaustion., not what looks respectable.

Where do you feel most like yourself?

3. The Ancestral Lens Prompt

Which beliefs about success, security, or worth do I suspect I inherited rather than consciously chose?

If those beliefs were shaped by fear or survival,

what might it be like to thank them

and still loosen your grip?

4. The Afterlife Question

If I had to answer “How did it go?” today, what would I hope I could say one year from now?

Do not ask what you need to overhaul.

Ask instead:

What deserves more attention?

What deserves more gentleness?

What deserves permission?

If anything you write feels shareable, you are welcome to leave it in the comments. If it feels private, it still matters.

A Note a Reader Shared (With Permission)

A reader wrote to me after sitting with the poem and these questions. She allowed me to share this.

“This time of year feels so heavy, it’s hard to stop the dark coming in; after reading the poem, I realised that if my dad asked me how it was going, I would not mention any of that;

I would tell him which songs still undo me, the things my kids love.”

What a tender thing to admit, and what a very human one.

Thank you for saying this out loud: Grief has seasons, just as the year does, and this time often stirs the old ache even when we think we have learnt how to live around it.

What you are feeling is not a failure of healing: It is the heart remembering love.

Psychologists now speak of grief not as something we move on from, but something we learn to carry differently. The bond does not disappear; it changes shape, and when the world grows darker, that bond can feel louder, closer, heavier.

But here is something I want to offer you, gently.

The love you were given was never meant to be paid for with ongoing sadness. The people who love us do not wish to be remembered through our suffering. If he could sit beside you now, he would not want your days dimmed on his account. He would want your eyes open to small joys, because they mean you are still alive inside the love he helped build.

Joy is not a betrayal of grief. It is proof that the love worked.

You can let the dark pass through without letting it take up residence. Sometimes joy does not arrive as happiness; sometimes it is simply noticing the warmth of a mug in your hands, a light in a window, a moment where your breath softens. That is enough. That is opening the door.

You are allowed to live fully with your grief, not under it.

And every time you choose light, even quietly, you honour the love that shaped you far more than sadness ever could.

The question “What will you tell them?” is not waiting for us at the end of life.

It is walking beside us now.

Shaping how we speak about our days.

What we notice.

What we honour.

May we become fluent not only in what hurt,

but in what mattered.

And may we remember, while we still can,

that life was never meant to be survived; it was meant to be lived.

With warmth,

Mimi G

Tonight the doorbell will ring and some of the faces will be on longer legs; hoods up. Mascara a little lived in voices trying on adulthood like a jacket that is still too big. It is tempting to read height as trouble and forget the obvious: They are still children; brains and hearts mid-construction: What they need most is our example, not our suspicion.

Here is what we know: Young people learn from the weather of our behaviour. When adults expect the best, children are more likely to rise. When we label them as problems, they can grow into the label; belief builds, you know its true and studies agree, but; so does doubt. This is not just poetry; expectations shape outcomes. Negative stereotypes can choke performance and labels can become scripts.

And one steady, trusted adult can change the arc of a life. Warmth predicts better choices, better health, better school days. Which means your smile at the doorstep is not small at all. It is practice for the kind of neighbours they will become.

So tonight, when the big kids knock, choose to believe them. Switch on the porch light. Offer the sweets and the warm goodnight, please let them leave your step with the feeling that we expect good from them. That we see the child inside the height.

That we believe in our fellow humans.

Because what we show them now is what they will show the world later.

Below is a short poem to share. If it lands, pass it on to the parents in your community; may it send more kindness into the dark, one doorstep at a time.

Treat the Big Kids

When tall kids knock in the door tonight;

remember they are children in borrowed height.

We judge the trainers and last-minute mask,

but courage, not costume, is the harder task.

We mutter grown up, too greedy for sweets,

and miss how a brave heart wobbles and beats.

Hood up means shy, not up to no good;

The night asks for visitors, and welcome we should.

Inside that height is a milk-tooth grin,

blank pages open to write us in.

They’re sponges for weather we bring to the street,

they drink up our manners and pour them on neat.

What we model tonight may walk in their shoes;

tomorrow your kindness is something they choose.

So switch on the porch light, choose cheer not fright,

tuck every sweet with a warm goodnight.

Say help yourself, take two if you like,

praise smudged mascara and the borrowed bike.

No age checks, no sneers, no chilly test;

ask how it’s going and wish them the best.

Stock their memory drawer with grace and delight,

so when life knocks hard, something glows bright.

Trick is suspicion that blinkers our view;

treat is belief: Let that be our cue.

Teens are still children, adults too soon.

Meet them with kindness; they will learn from you.

mimi.g

I remember so clearly the knot in my stomach, the lack of sleep before opening my own exam results.
The build-up.
The effort.
The worry that it would define me, and what would those around me think of me.

Looking back now, I can honestly say; those grades made very little difference to the life I have lived since, and that has been the greatest relief, because it would be a sad place we live in if marks on a screen or paper stopped you going where your meant to go!

What has shaped my life was not letters or numbers on a page, but the will to try new things, the grit to see them through, and the wonderful people who walked beside me.

I have learned that if you are kind, if you keep going, and if you don’t give up at the first hurdle, you can achieve almost anything you want. I know without a doubt that you are capable beyond all that you imagine today!

So, for anyone staring at exam results today, or still carrying the weight of them years later; this is for you.

More Than Marks

Exam results don’t show
the way you make people feel safe with a smile,
or how you remember the small things
that matter the most.

They don’t measure honesty,
or the kind of loyalty that makes you
the friend everyone wants beside them.

No grade can pin down
your knack for seeing the funny side,
your ability to organise chaos into calm,
your creativity that colours the grey.

They don’t test your reliability,
your commitment,
your love that spills quietly into the world
making it softer, better, brighter.

So when you stare at those letters and numbers,
remember this:
you are so much more than marks on a page.
You are a whole constellation of brilliance,
and no exam board has the scale
to measure you.

💛 If this speaks to you or to someone you love today, please share it with them.

📌 Watch the reel here:

#GCSEresultsday #MoreThanGrades #ResultsDay2025 #TeenMentalHealth #WordsToHeal #PoetryThatHeals #YouAreEnough

A Soul Letter by Mimi G | Inspired by Dr Gabor Maté

There’s a moment in a podcast with Dr Gabor Maté that lingers in the air, long after the sound fades:

“If a child is valued just for existing, they don’t have to keep proving it. If not, they’ll spend a lifetime trying to be important.”

I paused. Rewound. Listened again. Not because I had never heard anything like it before, but because this time, it did not sound like psychology. It sounded like truth.

And I felt it in my bones.

I thought of my own childhood. And then I thought of my children. I hope, with all I have, that I made them feel full to the brim with the worth I see in their very existence. Did I implant that worth irrevocably? My goodness, I hope so. But if I am honest, I see signs in both my adult children that perhaps I did not.

There is something profoundly unfair about the way we arrive into the world; perfect, miraculous and then spend the next ninety plus years (ever the optimist) auditioning to be enough.

We become excellent (or try to be)... At everything… Except being.

This Is Not Just Philosophy. It Is Physiology.

By the time we are three years old, our brains have already laid down much of the blueprint for who we believe ourselves to be. Not from what we were told, but from how we were held.

When love is unconditional, the nervous system settles. The world feels safe. The body learns, I am allowed to be.

But when love is earned, through cleverness, quietness, usefulness, beauty, the nervous system takes notes, and it does not write in poetry.

It writes in cortisol, in heart rate variability, in the patterning of synapses and the tension in our jaw when we rest.

This is not abstract; It really is science.

Research Bites (for the curious, the sceptical, and the healing) - which one are you?

🧠 The brain’s survival centres; particularly the amygdala and HPA axis, become overactive in children raised with conditional or inconsistent love. This is the birthplace of anxiety, people pleasing, perfectionism, and over functioning.
(Teicher et al., 2003; McCrory et al., 2010)

🧠 Epigenetics shows us that trauma changes us on a genetic level. The children of Holocaust survivors, for example, show altered cortisol regulation. Their biology remembers what their mind cannot say.
(Yehuda et al., 2014)

🧠 Attachment theory (Bowlby & Ainsworth) explains that when caregivers are emotionally attuned, a secure base is formed. When they are not, children adapt; through compliance, withdrawal, or overachievement; and they name that adaptation personality.

🧠 Carl Rogers, the father of humanistic psychology, wrote:

“When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
But first, someone must give us permission to exist without justification. Most of us were not granted that peace, I am sad to say.

The Quiet Art of Performing Worth

Perhaps you grew up where achievement was currency. Perhaps your vulnerability was misunderstood as weakness. Perhaps you were praised for your intellect, or sporting prowess...but your voice or tears were too loud.

Perhaps your beauty was noticed, but your anger was not welcome.

Perhaps you were so good, so easy, so responsible, that nobody noticed you were disappearing.

So you learned to contort. To earn. To prove.

And now, as an adult, you feel fraudulent in stillness, ashamed in rest. You worry that love or connection will vanish the moment you stop being useful.

This is not your fault. But it is your invitation.

It Is Not Just Personal. It Is Generational. We Can Change It

Zoom out.

Your parents were children once too. Children who may never have been celebrated for simply existing. And so they passed on what they knew: Be good, be clever, be strong, be useful; and then, we will love you.

Unhealed wounds often masquerade as parenting philosophies.

This is the grief and the grace of it: You did not just inherit your grandmother’s eyes. You inherited the reasons she did not use them to cry.

What Do We Do With This?

You cannot go back and become the baby who was celebrated just for being alive. If you could, we would all be there cheering, because you are a marvel.

But you can become the adult who stops seeking the spotlight, and instead holds the mirror. And looks. Really looks.

You can learn the language of your nervous system. You can feel the ache behind your achievements. You can recognise that your perfectionism was once a strategy for safety. That your people pleasing was once your only form of love.

And then you can choose something else. Not immediately. But eventually.

Here Is What I Know (and Keep Forgetting, and Learning Again)

🌟 You do not need to be extraordinary to be worthy.
🌟 Your kind heart is not a liability.
🌟 Love that must be earned is not love. It is approval in costume.
🌟 Healing is not about fixing. It is about remembering.
🌟 You are not broken. You were shaped by survival.

And perhaps, all this time, you have been mistaking applause for affection.

You Are Not Too Late

It is not too late if it has taken you thirty, forty, fifty maybe sixty or more years to realise you have been chasing something you should have received freely.

You are not behind, it is wonderful that you are arriving. I see people all around me at work and home life who may never read the permission slip to accept their genuine worth.

Because as it turns out, you were never meant to earn your worth. It was meant to be installed in your bones, like marrow.

And now, you are remembering. Right now.

Was this letter written for you? Forward it to someone still auditioning for love. Save it for the days you feel like you are not quite enough, I ask you please to come back to it whenever you forget who you were before you began to be measured on performance.

With you all the way,
Mimi G x

p.s I think it is important to remember our parents, parented with what they had and knew, forgive them, and yourself what you do not know (If appropriate).

🕋 Soul Letters

Poetry & Prose

Poetry gives our nervous system a different kind of permission.
It bypasses logic and sinks into the limbic system, offering not instruction, but connection.
Research shows that storytelling and rhythm help regulate the nervous system and anchor emotion in memory (Porges, 2017; Cozolino, 2014).
So when you read a line that makes you feel seen (and I so hope that you do); your body remembers.
I hope it feels a little like you’re at home

A Mother’s Hope
For the ones we raise, and the ones we become.

I hope you have learnt to love yourself
before the world taught you to earn it.

That you rest;
not when you’re running on empty,
but often,
because life is not a race
and exhaustion is not a badge.

I hope you chase joy,
not applause.
That you sing your song
even when the room is silent;
especially then.

I hope you treat the uber driver
and the CEO
with equal grace;
because kindness never cared
for job titles.

I hope you stand tall
on feet that know their strength.
That you build a life
so rich in truth
that no one else gets to script it for you.

When the world is too loud,
too cruel,
too quick to label your softness
as weakness;

I hope you stay soft.
Because softness
is your quiet superpower.

I hope you feel your feelings
instead of fleeing them;
because every emotion
is just a message
asking to be heard.

I hope you never forget:
your mind is a compass,
your body is your home,
and your time
is the most expensive thing you’ll ever spend.

Spend it like it matters.

You have three currencies in this life;
time, money, knowledge;
and you’re always trading one.

So be wise, my love.
Know your worth.
Raise your standards,
not just your voice.

Set kind boundaries.
Let people earn access to your softness.
You teach the world
how to treat you.

And if ever you wonder
whether you’re enough;
know this with absolutely no doubt;
you were worthy
the day you were born.

Never stay where you must shrink
to fit.

Come home;
to yourself,
to me.

And if one day I’m not here
to answer the phone
or catch your tears,

just know this:
I’m still cheering for you.
Louder than ever.

Always.

Mum x

mimi.g

You’ve got this;
that pull in your chest,
the life that keeps tapping
when you try to rest.

You don’t need a map,
or a sign from above;
just a sliver of courage
and a slingshot of love.

Start without answers.
Begin without proof.
The path will appear
when your feet tell the truth.

That dream? Still waiting.
That joy? Still near.
So go; even gently.
You’re more ready than you fear.

mimi.g

If these poems spoke to you,
📌 save them for later,
📨 or forward this to someone who needs reminding that they are cared about,
🗣️ or share your favourite line in the comments; I always reply

💌 Letters to the Woman I Was

Each month, I answer one letter from a reader with heart, honesty, and a little soul science. If you would like to write in, you can do so anonymously here, I would love to hear from you.

Dear Mimi,

It’s been over a year since I left my husband.
The relief I felt was immediate, but so was the silence.
Now that the chaos is gone, all I can hear is myself, and I don’t know if I even like who I am without him.

I was walking on egg shells all the time, and made me feel small for so long that I’m not sure I know how to be in the world on my own terms.
I still catch myself apologising for things that aren't mine, I still flinch when someone raises their voice, or there is a knock at the door.
I’m angry at how long I stayed. But also… sometimes I miss him.
Is that madness?

I thought leaving would mean freedom, but this version of me feels fragile, messy, unsure.
How do I start over when I’m still untangling everything he convinced me I was?

— Finding My Feet

Dear Finding My Feet,

Thank you for writing. What you are experiencing is not madness; it is the natural response of a nervous system that has lived too long in survival mode, and is only now being offered the unfamiliar possibility of safety.

When someone has chipped away at your sense of self for a long time, it makes sense that silence would feel like a shock. The noise may be gone, but your body is still listening for danger. Those flinches, those instinctive apologies; they are echoes of a protective system doing what it was trained to do.

What you are noticing in yourself is not weakness, but awareness; and awareness is the first step in healing.

You are right that emotional abuse leaves more than bruises. It leaves blueprints. It trains us to shrink, to scan for threat, to mistrust our own instincts. So when the relationship ends, the rebuilding does not begin with confidence, It must begin with tenderness and learning to meet yourself in the quiet.

There is nothing wrong with missing someone who hurt you, the bond formed in trauma can be powerful. It is not love you are missing, it is familiarity and it is the structure of a life you knew, even if it was painful. Unhealthy dynamics often feel like home to the parts of us that were wired to endure, not to thrive. But your awareness of this, your naming of it, shows me that you are already on the path home to yourself.

When you feel yourself apologising for things that are not yours to carry, I invite you to pause and try asking, “Would you mind repeating that?” Not because you or they did anything wrong, but to give yourself a moment. A breath. A choice to answer differently, without apology.

And when your breath feels tight or your body is bracing, I recommend a simple technique called box breathing. It is often used in trauma recovery and nervous system regulation.
Try this:

• Imagine a box in your mind- 4 sides - 4 corners

• Inhale for a count of four

• Hold for four

• Exhale for four

• Hold for four

Repeat gently, a few times. Let your body know: We are safe now.
It is a small act of defiance against the fear that used to run the show.

You are not broken, you are rewiring.

You are not starting from scratch, you are starting from truth.

Let the version of you who stayed be met with compassion; she did what she needed to survive. But let the version of you who left be honoured too; she is the one writing to me now, asking how to begin again.

You begin like this:

By holding your apology.
By walking your anger through the trees, writing it down, talking to a friend, going for run, moving your body it good, stress stays cooped up with in us.
By sitting beside the ache without making it wrong.
By whispering to yourself, I am allowed to take up space.

You are not behind. You are becoming.
And I am walking this road with you, every brave and messy step.

With all my heart,
Mimi

💌 Want to send in a letter? You can do so here, anonymously or not.
I read every one and respond to one in each newsletter.

Tribute to Andrea Gibson

Andrea Gibson was not just a poet. They were a fierce embrace of truth, an electric pulse wrapped in ink and breath. They taught us that hearts don't break; they stretch. That love is not only found in softness, but in the daring act of opening wider, again and again, even when the edges fray. Their life was a poem in motion; a radical testament to living without apology, without retreat, and without forgetting how to feel, even in the hardest moments. Rest in power, Andrea.

Your words remain forever.

✍️ Journaling Prompt

“If I could write a letter to the girl I was, what would I say?”

A gentle invitation to sit beside the younger you; the girl you were before the world gave her mirrors instead of maps.
And speak to her. Not with correction, but with kindness.
Not with pity, but with reverence.

Begin with curiosity.
Ask her what she believed about love, about safety, about herself.
What did she know deep down that the adults around her did not affirm?
What did she carry too early?
What did she need to hear that never came?

And then tell her.

Tell her she was never too much.
Tell her that her tears were data, not weakness.
Tell her that her joy was not embarrassing.
Tell her that the ache in her chest was not proof of being broken;
only proof that she felt the world in full colour.

Write to her like the mother you never met,
the sister you always needed,
the future self she dreamt about at night.

Take ten minutes.
Perhaps in nature, or with your glass of water before bed.
Let it be simple, sacred.
No fixing. No perfection. Just presence.

And if she speaks back to you,
listen.
She remembers everything.

With heart,
Mimi G

🧠 Five Thoughtful Clicks for the Curious (With a cup of something warm in hand.)

I have chosen each of these links have been chosen not for how loud it shouts, but for how deeply it speaks. They each offer something different; an honest reckoning, a call to rest, a mirror to society, or a glimmer of collective hope.

1. Do Self-Help Books Actually Help? Josh Drummond
🔗 Read the full piece

This one made me exhale a small, knowing laugh.
It's a graceful nudge at our collective bookshelf; the one groaning under the weight of titles promising transformation in 90 days or less. But rather than scoffing, the author invites us into a gentle interrogation: when we consume wisdom like entertainment, are we living it or simulating virtue?

It is witty and tender, like being called out by a friend who knows you well and loves you anyway.

2. Mental Health Care ‘Being Rationed,’ Top Doctor Warns Rebecca Thomas
🔗 Read the article

While many of us are journaling our way through healing, this sobering piece reminds us that inner work is not always enough; especially when the system is fraying.
It’s a stark, fact filled window into a wider crisis: underfunded services, long waiting lists, and silent suffering.

There’s a quiet invitation here to widen our lens, to hold both the personal and the political, and perhaps to let our compassion become courage.

3. New Poetry from Rattle Magazine
🔗 Explore the poems

Because sometimes the soul needs a sentence it didn’t see coming.
This living, breathing anthology serves up poetry that doesn’t just sound pretty; it stings, it soothes, it speaks.
One recent piece on the meaning of “work” stopped me in my scrolling tracks.

This is where you go when you want to feel language doing what it was made for.
Perfect for a quiet moment when prose won’t do.

4. Incredible Italy Writing Retreat Edwina Shaw
🔗 See the retreat

Tuscany. Time. A pen. A glass of something cold; I even saw the word ‘yoga’ I mean..a girl can dream, right?
And the kind of quiet that writes for you when you stop trying so hard.

This writing retreat feels less like a productivity push and more like a remembering; of creativity as rest, and rest as sacred.

Whether you go or not, it is a sweet reminder that good words and helpful thinking, come not from forcing but from softening.
Your best lines are often the ones written away from the every day noise.

5. Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival: Comfort & Disturb
🔗 Find out more

What a title.
This year’s festival explores the places where healing and discomfort coexist; where art doesn’t only comfort, but disrupts in the best way.

If you believe (like I do) that poetry, exercise, music, dance ( and a damn good giggle) and art can help us not just escape pain but understand it, then this is worth your eyes and heart.

A stirring blend of creative expression and social consciousness; right where my favourite things meet.

Let me know if you read any of them.
I would love to hear what stirred, sparked, or softly unsettled something in you.

With hope, wit, and always a little wonder,
Mimi x

If you are here, it is not by accident.
You did not stumble in; you were guided.

Some quieter part of you, the one that has grown tired of polishing and performing, recognised something here. A softness. A truth. A place where nothing needs to be fixed for it to be worthy.

So first, let me say this:
Welcome!
To your own place and self.
To this quiet, powerful, healing corner of the internet.
To Soul Letters, a sacred space for the human beneath the titles, the girl you once were, and the woman you are still becoming.

💌 Why I created this space

When I wrote my first book, Letters to the Woman I Was, I poured a whole lot of self into its pages; the ache, the joy, the remembering. I never expected it to become a #1 Amazon bestseller in poetry and self-help, but it did. And that told me something beautiful, I receive the most beautiful messages from people who have found a little of themselves in my words and I could not feel more blessed or humble:

That there are so many of us ready to choose gentleness and the occasional grit,
To choose depth over noise.
To live with more soul and less armour.

But a book has an ending.
This; this is the continuation (along with my instagram), whilst my next book takes shape.

A living, breathing circle.
A space to go deeper, to be real, to write the kind of life that will one day be worth remembering.

🪞What you can expect here

This is not just writing. This is medicine. This is a refuge, I hope somewhere you feel safe to share the chapters you do not ever talk about.
Here is how we will walk together:

✍️ A Personal Letter

Each bi- monthly issue will open with an essay or letter from me; thoughtful, truthful, and rooted in real life (and emotion). You will find pieces titled “On Starting Over,” “The Life You Mock,” or “The Secrets You Try to Keep.” Think of it as a warm hand on your shoulder and a gentle nudge toward your own truth.

💌 "Ask Mimi" Advice Column

This is our sacred, stupid magic of being loved space. You can submit your questions; about relationships, trauma, parenthood, family, love, boundaries, burnout, grief, ambition and joy, and I will respond to those I can with a compassionate, psychology informed reflection. These questions will guide our conversations, and I cannot wait to see what you bring to the fireside.

🎨 The Creative Corner

Sometimes prose cannot hold the truth the way poetry can. So here, I will share a short original poem or lyrical musing; to catch what logic misses and remind you of what you already know.

📚 Recommended Resources

Each month, I will share handpicked inspirations; books, podcasts, articles; that have nourished me recently, in case they might nourish you too.

🌀 Monthly Journaling Prompts

To help you meet yourself where you are. To access your own wisdom, in your own voice.

💭 Behind-the-Scenes Reflections

Real, unfiltered thoughts from a woman walking your path beside you; no perfection, just truth.

🎙️ Audio Notes + Workshop Invitations (for paid subscribers)

Occasional recordings and offers to go deeper; soulful sessions, real-time conversations, and experiences that bring us even closer.

🌙 The real point of all this

This is not a place for hustle, performance, or productivity metrics.
No one will remember your inbox count or your KPIs when you are gone.
They will remember how deeply you loved.
How safe it felt to sit beside you.
The quiet courage of your presence.

This newsletter is where we start writing that story.

A space where your softness is not a weakness.
Where your voice is not too much.
Where your story matters.

✨ If you feel called to go deeper…

When you become a paid subscriber, you are not just unlocking more content; you are becoming a patron of truth telling, soul keeping, and emotional reconnection.

You will receive:

• 💎 Full access to all letters, poems, and the full archive

• 🗓️ Monthly journaling prompts to bring you back to yourself

• 🪞 Honest reflections from behind the scenes

• 🎟️ Early access to workshops, special offers, and healing experiences

But more than that; you are helping keep a sacred space alive.
A space that says you do not need to be shinier, better, or more palatable.
You just need to be real, the real, wonderful you that you are.

There is a version of you you have not yet met.
She is rooted. Radiant. At home in her body, her story, her worth.
And every version of you before her has been quietly building her.

So here is your permission slip:
You do not need to arrive.
You just need to breathe, rest, and keep becoming.

Thank you for being here.
We are not doing this perfectly, but we are doing it together.

With all my love,
Mimi x

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