‘Yes,’ a delicate voice affirmed in the early hours of Boxing Day in 2023. It had interrupted me from a vivid dream. There were rows of us in the office – uniform and rigid. Thudding fingers on worn keyboards and eyes that hung heavy, resisting ever so slightly the illumination from the blinding, migraine-inducing lights. A tap on the shoulder alarmed me. ‘You’re being replaced,’ a faceless figure said. I panicked and pleaded: ‘But you said I was performing well! How will I pay my rent?’.

One by one, the faceless figure tapped the countless employees on the shoulders and revealed the same thing. I could feel the floor crumbling beneath my feet. Was I what the bible depicted – the man who built his house on sand? It was a reminder of my dutiful subservience to a world that didn’t see me as a human being but rather a machine. Produce. Produce. Produce.

That’s when I had realised: I had placed my sense of identity in a false sense of security. Then, it appeared. The white letters, loud and proud, stood out against a black backdrop: Ailsa Gillies. My name. Something that belonged to me, and more importantly, something that couldn’t be taken away from me. Panic now replaced by peace. ‘Yes,’ indeed.

The Corporate Disillusionment

(Stage 1: The Call to Awakening – a sense that something is missing, feeling disconnected from society and work, a desire for deeper meaning beyond material success, a breakdown of old beliefs and perspectives).

The dream lingered in me in the ensuing weeks, like a warning I couldn’t ignore, haunting my reluctant return to the office after the festive season. I couldn’t see the world the same way as I did before, no matter how hard I tried. I had well and truly become disillusioned by the very thing I had romanticised: being a hard-working, fiercely independent corporate woman.

A diary entry from that time reads: Everything feels different. The people around me, my job, who I feel I can trust. Everything. I noticed that my perception has really shifted. It’s like my perception of things is now stripping everything bare – everything that doesn’t feel authentic to who I am.

After my epilepsy diagnosis in 2020, I was determined to prove to the world that I was still capable of leading a ‘traditional’ life like everybody else, and in doing so, I betrayed myself and my body. The late nights and overtime were catching up to me and no matter how much I quickened my pace – they couldn’t be outrun.

The corporate world made sure I felt the writhe of my disability, like chasing a golden carrot on a stick until I ran myself straight into the GP practice time and time again. I began to question: Where is the nobility in suffering for a paycheck?

Leaning back on my chair, I couldn’t shake my new perception of the cold and sterile environment that I once envisioned as a gateway to my success. There I was, sandwiched between tall, glass buildings, faced with my own withering reflection and it was telling me an undeniable truth: that I didn’t belong there.

Corporate jargon began to irk me, none of it feeling real or authentic. I’d tear myself from bed every morning just to nod along to things I didn’t agree with. There was a glory in the grind set that I could no longer resonate with. Suffering was wore proudly as a badge for not taking sick days. Guilt was used as a powerful weapon to pry more from us who had no more in the reserves to give. Betrayals occurring frequently in the name of competition. A world that promoted standing on the frail, quivering feet of others to climb the illusion of a ladder that led to nowhere.

Perhaps that’s why they call it job ‘roles’ and I was tired of performing the character the corporate world expected of me. Someone cold and cut-throat, who had to learn how to flick the switch on her emotions to make harsh decisions in the name of being able to pay rent every month. Who had to feign wellness so that she wouldn’t face isolation or guilt. Or, for an addicting pat on the head from her superiors – then, her only source of validation.

I began to realise that every ‘yes’ to them, was saying ‘no’ to me – the real me. The ‘me’ that was warm, kind, gentle and… epileptic. The ‘me’ that would rather collaborate and connect than compete.

So many of us fall into this trap, trading authenticity for survival in a world that values profit over people. But, I knew there was a way out and I was going to find it.

The ‘Security’ Disillusionment

Reader, what makes you feel most secure right now? A roof over your head and a place to call your own? A job to go to that pays your bills? What if all of that was suddenly torn from beneath your feet?

Everything that I, at 23 years-old, had built my life upon; my job, my house, my beliefs, had crumbled within a matter of weeks since that dream on Boxing Day. Everything that we, as a society, proclaim is our security, I was stripped bare of.

And I came to understand the common thread: I had placed my value as a human being in what was external; on mercurial, tangible things that were, paradoxically, ridiculously insecure.

‘Poverty, disease, war, change, and death are nothing new. In the best of times ‘security’ has never been more than temporary and apparent. But it has been possible to make the insecurity of human life supportable by belief in unchanging things,’ says Alan Watts in his book, The Wisdom of Insecurity.

It made me think of the way we cling to concepts with bleeding hands just to evade the inevitable. Alan Watts is right: we all buy into the belief in unchanging concepts, such as paychecks, and corporate ladders, and even time!

Man-made concepts, these rigid beliefs, that stop us from facing the inalienable truth that we can be sacked or replaced, and won’t receive our monthly salary.

Or that a ladder that promises happiness and success if you put in hard work doesn’t really exist or we’d all have been at the top of it a long time ago. Or that time is not linear, it’s abstract, so we can’t ever really run out of it.

So, really, what is the rush? The rush is to make more, faster. Why? so that we can get a teenie tiny slice of the pie to pay our bills and call it ‘security’.

All of the above are nothing more than constructs and illusions motivated by fear. Fear is exactly what those at the top of most modern institutions exploit for more money.

The fear of change, the fear of insecurity, the fear of lack, the fear of scrutiny, judgement and finally, the fear of the unknown. The world hates the unknown. The world hates the abstract, the fluid and flexible… and it hates it because it can’t profit from it.

At this point, my job was not the only area of my life where my illusions were shattered. My health took a horrendous toll from the flat that I was renting. A flat that was infested with mice, mould, woodlice and bedbugs.

An excerpt from my diary around this time read: My health took a turn on Saturday night. Heart palpitations, breathlessness. My mum stayed with me on the phone. I need to go back and stay with my parents. It’s hard admitting that I need them more than I thought I did.

What started off with a few emails to the letting agency here and there, became persistent efforts to have at least some form of contact with them. With delayed responses and at one point, an employee even failing to turn up to inspect the issues, I resigned all hope and began my search for other properties. Then, came countless viewings and applications with no avail.

My mum then suggested meeting with a mortgage advisor. After a brief discussion, it made sense why I had very little options other than to pay over £500 a month to a company who never even so much as acknowledged my existence, never mind complaints regarding broken appliances and health concerns.

My mortgage advisor had told me that I’ve moved around too much to get a mortgage, which left me with no other option but to return to competing tirelessly with other people in the very same situation for housing. All of us battling for a sense of ‘security’ that would never truly be ours.

And why was I moving around so much? Well, why does anybody? Because as Alan Watts says, life happens: death, poverty, illnesses, accidents, career changes, university and break-ups! Life is, by its very nature, insecure and ever-changing.

Nothing is ever guaranteed no matter how much the world tries to dress it up. So, essentially I felt, like many of us, that I was charged for the crime of being so undeniably human. And that my sentence was to live in this barely inhabitable flat that was destroying my health.

I tried to ‘just stick it out’ because if I stuck it out, I thought it would look better on a mortgage application because I won’t be moving so much (fear of insecurity). I tried to ‘just stick it out’ because if I gave it up, I’d appear weak (fear of judgement). I tried to ‘just stick it out’ because that’s what everybody else does (fear of differentiating from the norm).

So to ‘stick it out’ would be the safe and logical thing to do, right? As Alan Watts states: “We think making sense out of life is impossible unless the flow of events can somehow be fitted into a framework of rigid forms. To be meaningful, [we think that] life must be understandable in terms of fixed ideas and laws…”

But, reader, again, life naturally moves so much! My life and my unique human journey is not the same as my neighbour’s. It does not fit into a rigid, ‘one-size fits all’ framework designed by banks and institutions. And the worst part is, if you don’t fit into that framework, they have you believing that it’s something wrong with you. But there’s not, and finally, I can speak on that from experience.

Trying to put the fluid human experience into a rigid framework is like trying to wrap water up in a parcel. Or, trying to put an irregular-shaped peg in a very square hole. We are caught in a vicious cycle of attempting the impossible and chasing the unattainable, wasting our efforts and working ourselves into the ground. Now, that, is insanity!

Coming home from working overtime to floors covered in mice droppings, a broken boiler, food half eaten by various creatures and damp bedsheets from moisture in the air – I was yet again betraying my wellness by staying there. “…we have been taught to neglect, despise, and violate our bodies, and to put all faith in our brains,” Watts continues, “to resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist, you kill yourself. The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

And join the dance is exactly what I done. I moved with the current instead of against it and returned back home to my parents. I also took some time off work, which I felt was much to their dismay.

But, for the first time, perhaps ever, I was really listening to my body and respecting its intelligence; the very intuitive being that it was. And if that meant making decisions that made me appear ‘weak’, ‘incapable’ or even ‘insane’ to people on the outside, I knew that I would rather be courageous than compliant.

Psychosis or Awakening?

(Stage 2: The Dark Night of the Soul – ego death, intense suffering, depression, confusion, loss of identity.)

Things are darkest right before the dawn, I wrote in my diary in January 2024. The mornings have been the hardest and heaviest this week. I was in such a state of hopelessness that I didn’t even feel like I could write.

The world had never felt so dark and my life had never felt so meaningless. What were the years at university for? Why did I do all that overtime at work? What did my degrees even mean? There were no answers. I was in the pit; silent and afraid.

I knew what I didn’t want, and half knew what I wanted. The same entry read: I stood on the grass in the garden yesterday as the wind and rain pelted us and cried to my mum: ‘My work here is purposeless! It has no meaning. I need to do meaningful work in the world!’ I feel wasted behind those walls.

I wanted to use my words and creativity to heal and serve people. Not to send repetitive corporate emails and feel like every stroke of the key was an empty lie. I was raised to speak the truth and to express it with unwavering conviction in everything I do. I had always prided myself in my integrity, and now, I had never felt more ashamed of what I had to become to buy into a false sense of security.

So, there I was, between boxes and bin bags, under a yellow duvet in the spare room at my parent’s house, and I was playing tennis with two ideas: this was either psychosis after the intense environmental conditions I had just experienced, or, more radically… this was a spiritual awakening. Was I breaking down or breaking through?

The Conversation with Nature

(Stage 3: The Search for Truth – looking for spiritual wisdom in nature, books, meditation, philosophy, becoming more introspective and questioning reality.)

There was a voice that echoed in the depths of my soul: you aren’t going to have it easy, but you’re going to have it good. This was different to the ‘yes’ voice that felt like if I reached out far enough, I could touch it. It felt as though it had woven itself into my very DNA – something I couldn’t touch, see, or hear in the tangible world, but was as intrinsically a part of me as the coding that determined the green of my eyes. It was clear that, on this journey, surrendering my tight grip on logic, was not just inevitable – it was necessary.

That was the thing, while back at my parent’s house and taking time off of work, I had so much space and time to reflect on the illogical events leading up to the Boxing Day dream. I thought back to one night in particular, where I was ignoring the hours on the clock, writing something that felt like it wasn’t even me sitting at the keyboard.

It was a prose piece called ‘Regress, Digress, Progress’ about a man who had become so consumed by his job and his wage, that he ended up neglecting the things that mattered most in life; his connections and passions, and subsequently died with nobody at his bedside. (As a side note: I later read Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and noticed it had similar themes.)

The words, the language and the style made me feel like a fraud when I read it back. I was used to spending my time writing corporate jargon and shooting a few emails a day, not this. I felt I had no business writing so vibrantly, creatively and playfully.

I remember watching the story play out in my mind’s eye like a film as I hammered the keys. I could taste, touch and feel all that I was writing as if this was a life I had lived; as if I fitted perfectly into my character’s suit. The most intriguing part of this piece was my knowledge of 1940s financial services. Me, who barely scraped National 5 maths, and certainly had no knowledge of how banking worked in the 40s. Psychosis, definitely psychosis, I thought.

Then, I remembered, that was around the time when I began reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. ‘Going sane feels just like going crazy,’ she wrote. Her book was a creative and spiritual manifesto for following your most authentic dreams, requiring writing three pages of conscious thought every single morning. And I followed it. From then on, I understood that I had unblocked a part of me that was clawing at my hard walls to be let out.

‘Going sane feels just like going crazy’ became words to live by as I began to embrace the natural absurdity that comes with following your authentic path. Having to believe in something bigger, something you can’t see or touch, but feel. An omnipotent, higher power that I was co-creating and weaving this life with, and knowing that if I’m brave enough to take the jump, its hands will appear. And I can’t lie, reader: it did.

In the following days, I had this deep longing for quiet. Even listening to music felt like too much stimulation for me. So, to fulfil this, I spent a lot of time in the most perfect place to question existence – the graveyard. I’d sit under a tree and like Isaac Newton, wait for the apple to fall. And it did, but not all at once.

Everyday, I’d go out and ‘meet’ with nature. Meet with the birds and envy them. How they had a purpose and at that point, I felt I didn’t. I’d envy the trees, for they didn’t have to pretend to be flowers. And I’d envy the sky because it felt no shame for the days the clouds rolled and rain poured. It just simply ‘was’. But as the days in nature mounted to weeks, my envy turned to curiosity, then, finally, to ever-lasting admiration. To an awe so profound that I had to capture it for an eternity in a book.

My mum, while I was healing, offered a beautiful tender compassion that I had not experienced in years because I’d not truly returned ‘home’ to my family’s loving arms, since I became so very desperate to prove my independence. Everyday, she’d run me a bath, give me my vitamins and as I’d say my affirmations in the mirror, I love myself, I trust myself, I value myself and I honour myself, she’d chime in with ‘and I love Ailsa Gillies, too’. And above all, we laughed, and laughed hard.

I’d walk between the gravestones with her, reading names and knowing that one day, my own will be written and what would I have to show for it. A piece of paper that we call a degree? How much money was in my bank? ‘Here lies Ailsa Gillies, a hard worker and loyal employee’. These gravestones said nothing as such. They said ‘a loving mother’ or ‘a devoted husband’. And I knew that really, that’s all that will ever matter, is the people’s lives we touch a long the way.

I sat in the sunlight in the kitchen today, next to Lulu [our cockatiel] who was tweeting ‘you’re a pretty girl’, and I had a few thoughts to myself: I thought I had it all when I got my flat and this high-paying corporate job in the city centre. And now I’m leaving both behind.

By today’s standards – I have nothing. By my standard’s, I have it all. The scope of my wealth is determined by the vivacity of colours between the branches, the sweetness of my Manuka honey in the mornings. The volume of laughter that I share with my friends and family. It’s etched on the pages of the great authors I’ve yet to read. It’s the richness of knowledge that’s sought and love that flows without force. I have it all. So long as I seek, I’ll always be found.

Reflections like the above became more frequent as I began to see the beauty in the world again. But it was not linear. There were some days that I would catch myself in the middle of laughing and force myself back into misery out of guilt. How could I laugh when I was taking time off work for being miserable? But then I’d gently remind myself: I’m not taking time off work for being miserable, I’m taking time off work because I had been so miserable and now I need to heal. And what is the best medicine of all? Laughter.

The Rebellion

(Stage 4: The Breakthrough – enlightenment, sudden realisation that everything is interconnected, deeper inner peace, recognising the ego’s role and detaching)

What was happiness and why can I almost taste it? I thought, as I sat under a bench staring at sprouting cherry blossoms in early Spring. My curiosity was met with a strong intuitive answer: It’s something that’s already HAPPening. Again, I laughed at the insanity of chasing it, for it would forever elude my grip if I failed to realise its existence in every ordinary moment.

Witnessing a stranger being helped across the road; birds preening each other’s feathers and the soft warmth of sunlight on my skin. Its existence in the so simple that man can’t help but complicate, for everything must be chased, earned and captured.

But I had realised that day, that happiness requires none of these things. It just asks you to pay attention. To pay attention to the things we otherwise overlook in our devotion to the rat race and futile distractions.

Happiness asks you to taste your food fully, to hear every instrument in a song, to listen to the cadence of a loved one’s words. Unlike the corporate world, it doesn’t ask you to ‘do’, it just asks you to just ‘be’. And to just ‘be’ would be the most revolutionary act of my life.

I would meet old acquaintances in the street when I was back home, and they’d ask me what I’m doing now. At first, I’d fumble for the words, scared that I’d look aloof if I told them the truth. Scared that I’d look crazy for saying ‘well, I’m following the voice of my soul’.

Or, what could be worse than saying ‘I’m doing nothing’, while I was learning to ‘be everything’ that I was supposed to be ? However, I couldn’t help but tell the truth and then watch their pitying eyes. Listen as they gave me unsolicited advice that would, yet again, require me to betray myself to fit the rigid framework.

Still taking time off work with pressures to make a return, I found myself undertaking another revolutionary act. I fell in love. Fast and hard, yet so very carefully. Over this time, I had learned to trust myself. My ego screamed ‘now is not the right time you messy girl’, but my soul knew that it absolutely was. Because, for the first time, this wasn’t fireworks and butterflies. It was indescribable peace and serenity. It was safe to love again. To open my heart for the first time since the steel cold doors had been locked in order to survive.

This love truly transformed me. He was a reflection of a wavelength that I had now found myself upon. He was a soul who had experienced excruciating hardship but displayed such an admirable fortitude, not by anger or vengeance, but by choosing joy and warmth in spite of it. He was, and is, truly the most beautiful soul I have ever come across in my life and to know him, is to love him. To know him, you have no choice but to.

As the months passed, I was still sitting in liminal space, unsure of my purpose but knowing that, somehow, my pen would always be my sword. Knowing that writing and being of service was what I wanted to do. I just didn’t know how. I could not see the entire road ahead of me, but I followed the natural path that arose and trusted every single intuitive nudge that said this! and then this next! And bravely, I decided to make a return to work, but not in the same way as I did before.

I decided to put the corporate world to the test. Did it really value personal well-being and mental health? Did it really have my best interests at heart? I had a strategy, and a strategy that wasn’t born of cunning tactics, but of soft rebellion. I decided to work strictly within my contract to respect my health conditions and personal well-being. How ridiculous that that is a rebellious act in this day and age?

Because we are so often expected to comply with unwritten rules that everyone else follows, or face isolation. But after spending so long on my own and garnering strength, and also in the midst of fuelling myself with love, fear had vanquished. I had already looked all my demons in the eyes in that deep, dark pit. So now, I was ready and I was armed.

When I began to prioritise my health and well-being, I experienced resistance from those who saw my choices as a threat to the status quo. The pressure to conform – whether through guilt, subtle threats, or manipulation – was a stark reminder of how these systems often punish those who dare to step outside their prescribed roles.

To them, this wasn’t seen as an empowered decision, but as a flaw in my character. In fact, I was told, ‘I know I’m crossing a line here,’ followed by the explicit attempt to guilt me for honouring my boundaries. They know they’re crossing a line, but continue to cross it anyway. I was not seen as a human being with real feeling or value. So, why would they treat me as such?

This was less about my performance and more about exerting control over my time and choices. There was even an attempt to infer that I had my priorities all wrong because I was in love now. And the voids they once exploited for unpaid overtime in my evenings was now filled with connection – I now had somebody to have dinner with. Essentially, even the decisions I made with my own personal life was violated by the corporate world’s intrusion. It relentlessly finds away.

In the end, the constant pressure and attempts to make me feel as though I didn’t belong or wasn’t fulfilling my role took its toll. The attacks on my character became too much: how I clearly wasn’t cut out for the corporate world (what a compliment in hindsight), that writing would only ever be a hobby and comments that I was ‘too sensitive’ and ‘couldn’t handle the real world’.

You know, that same ‘real’ world that is so coated in illusory and fickle concepts, and has built its very foundations on a metaphorical ladder that leads to the ‘top’. Well, I’m so glad I couldn’t handle the ‘real’ world. The expectation was clear: conform to their mould, or face being pushed out.

But, reader, I wasn’t alarmed when they did this. Their reaction told me everything I needed to know about the system I worked for. It was more just tangible validation of a very spiritual feeling that I knew to be true. So, why return?

Because I wasn’t about to just fade out of there quietly, like I had done at many jobs before. In my silence, while many thought I was on a downward spiral, I was actually on the most uphill trajectory of my life. In my silence, I had found a voice. And I was going to use it.

Filing a grievance became a necessary step to hold the system accountable for the harm it was causing. The act of standing up for myself wasn’t just about me—it was a reflection of the larger issue many face when trying to maintain their dignity in environments that discourage authenticity.

It was about holding authority to account. That’s something that has always run in my genes, and I owe that to my Trade Unionist mother.

A Test of Faith

(Stage 5: Integration & Healing – letting go of old wounds, fears and conditioning, aligning actions with authentic self, deepening self-compassion and connection to others.)

The grievance never ruled in my favour (when does an internal investigation ever?), but I felt I had already laid the foundation for anyone else who experienced what I did. Though, I couldn’t help feeling this lingering sense of injustice. A real powerless moment in my life, followed by heartbreaking disappointment. A point where actually, I did question my trust in the universe. Surely, it would have my back if it had led me this far away from that world?

And though there was a sense of relief and liberation after putting that old dystopian life to bed, it came with undeniable bouts of fear. The fear, once again, of uncertainty. Especially when every voice around me was asking: ‘So, what’s next? When are you going to get another job? What are you going to do about money?’, and none of those questions had a solid answer. Not even from the intuition that I had previously trusted.

People around me were convincing me to go back into something similar. But why would I go into the same system, just in a different font? How many times must I disguise myself as a monkey just to climb a tree I hate when surely, if I’m true to the scales and gills that God gave me, I can thrive where a fish belongs – in the water. How ridiculous would it be to force a fish to climb a tree, and have it live the rest of its life believing it’s stupid and doesn’t belong?

Doubt, fear and distrust will have you doing silly things to evade uncertainty, like applying for almost 300 jobs in the corporate world again because you fear that money will run out. And the universe met me with around the same number of rejections, which I now understand to be ‘protections’ and perhaps even ‘redirections’. I, was doing it again, trying to put my irregular shape in a very square hole and the universe was having none of it. Had I learned nothing?

At this point, I had also moved in with my brother and his partner, since my parents had to move house. Unable to find a flat, unable to find a job and my parents so far away from me, my terrain had never felt so unstable. And I had never felt so powerless. Or, was this freedom?

Through all of this change, the one constant remained: writing every single day, three pages, like The Artist’s Way had asked of me. Then, came the desire to write a novel, to collate all of my diary entries, of my wild experiences of my city life in Glasgow as a 23 and 24 year-old. To relay the ridiculousness, the messiness of youth and how us humans, no matter how absurd, will do anything to fill the voids to escape the feeling. The feeling that we’re meant for more. A book. That was it. I was writing my way into finding myself.

And sitting in the spare bedroom of my brother’s house, again, wedged between boxes and bags, I decided if I can’t find my place in the world, then I’m going to create it.

Finding My Purpose

(Stage 6: Living in Flow – embodying your authentic self, sense of service to others, sense of purpose, a lasting feeling of inner freedom and trust in the universe.)

I can see the beauty all around me again. I feel cradled by some unseen force. I have to pick myself back up, dust myself off and start rebuilding. This time – on a solid foundation. Something that not a single person can take away from me.

To first become something, we must ‘unbecome’ all that we were conditioned to be, Who was I before I was bullied into conformity? Who was I before I was scared of criticism and rejection? Who was I before I was painfully submissive to authority? I was a child.

I was a creative, playful, light-hearted little child. I wrote poems, and stories. I would dress-up in my nana’s pearls and put on shows for my family. I would paint all over walls. And I would put tutus on my head and gloves on my feet.

Because I didn’t care if it was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. I didn’t care very much for order and sensibility. Nor for what other people thought of me. Because how intelligent are we as children, that we know that to stay within the confines, to remain within order and care what everybody else thinks, would be so painfully limiting to the human experience. As children, we knew intuitively that freedom mattered more than getting it right. How remarkable that we had more sense then than we do now?

Then someone comes along and tells us that to paint the sky green in a picture is ‘wrong’ and we mustn’t do that. Somewhere along the line being ‘safe’, being ‘secure’, being ‘right’, becomes more valuable than allowing ourselves to evolve and expand, and get things so liberatingly wrong. So instead, we constrict. And as adults, we pay the price. We’re scared to make mistakes. We’re too scared to paint the sky green in case we’re ridiculed or criticised. Thus, our human experience becomes so limited. I was tired of colouring within the lines. It was time to paint the sky green.

The Boxing Day dream had told me all along and it finally clicked. I was going to build something off of my name, my values and my authenticity. Something that entirely opposes the rigid framework of a ‘one-size fits all’ corporate world. I was ready to build Ailsa Gillies Editorial and I was going to build it off of strong pillars: connection, creativity, empowerment and impact. I didn’t care very much for profit. I cared for impact. I trusted that if I took two steps forward, the universe would take ten with me. If I bring the thread to the loom, the great tapestry will emerge. And, so it did. My faith had truly been reinstated.

Soon, I was able to move into a beautiful house by nature with my fiance. I said to him one day when we were going to flat viewings: ‘Let me prove that the universe listens. Choose a symbol, any symbol in the world, and if you see it, let it be your sign that something is right for you.’ Somewhat skeptical, he said ‘crescent’, like a crescent moon.

Over the ensuing weeks, both of us saw crescent moons everywhere, from shop windows, to Facebook posts. On our very last flat viewing, we had a successful application for a house whose address had ‘crescent’ in it. From then on, he really believes. Truly, after all my rejections, it was clear they were just redirections, because this is now ‘our home’. This was a huge confirmation for me of trusting the process.

And, it’s in this home that I set up Ailsa Gillies Editorial, in our spare bedroom, where I’m no longer surrounded by boxes and bags, but books and flowers. Here, I have returned to the child in me. I have let her play, I’ve let her be curious, I’ve let her guide me and trusted everywhere she has taken me on this journey.

And last October, on a rainy Sunday, I lit a candle and sat at my desk. I had an urge to use my old watercolours that I hadn’t used in years. I’m not an avid painter and have never considered myself particularly talented at it, but I trusted the urge. As I experimented with the paints and listened to some calming music, a phrase popped into my head: ‘Writhes & Wriggles’. Over and over again.

I swapped my paintbrush for a pen and wrote down in my diary the phrase repeatedly. Writhes and wriggles. Autumn comes with writhes and wriggles and aches I can’t explain. And the more I fumble for the answers, the longer I’m in pain. For I know the remedy to my cure is stored in letting go, but the more I tend to think about it, the less I seem to know. And so, my first ever book, Conversations with Nature, was born.

I have taken the wisdom that nature graced me with from my time ‘in the pit’, and created a small, poetic manifesto of soft rebellion. Of the revolutionary act of slowing down, allowing yourself to be joyful without guilt, to rest without stress and to trust your wings even when the branch snaps. These are all soft, graceful acts of self-love and this world hates to see you love yourself. But, how about you join me and do it anyway?

Ailsa Gillies Editorial is becoming more than I had imagined. It’s no longer just a place to share my writing, but a place of being of service. This journey has not only shaped my life, but it has shaped the way I want to serve others on their journey. Through Ailsa Gillies Editorial, I want to offer a space for people to follow their own journey, and inspire the confidence in others to freely create, explore, and reclaim their voices with my support and guidance.

Following the release of Conversations with Nature, I’m planning to lead online courses and workshops for writing, self-discovery, following your purpose and healing, so please keep your eyes peeled for more information on that, and if you’re interested in getting involved, please get in touch with me at ailsagillieseditorial@gmail.com.

I’m also in the process of creating an arts and culture magazine called ‘Cross-Cultural’, a place where arts and culture have no borders. It’s all about bridging gaps in creative education: making writing, arts and culture accessible and inclusive for everybody. If you’d like your art, music, film or writing featured or reviewed, or just have a story you’d like to share please fill out the contact form here.

I’ll also be looking to host training workshops for people who want to get involved in this, no matter their level of writing or journalism experience. Everyone deserves an opportunity to learn, develop their voice and feel empowered to contribute to the global space. If you’ve always wanted to write for a publication and have your voice heard, then please do get in touch with the above email address.

Every twist and turn in this journey, all the ‘crazy’ decisions and moments in the pit were never about breaking me down – they were about setting me free. I have found the ‘real’ world. It’s a place where my sensitivity is a blessing, not a curse. My empathy has fuelled me into discovering a whole new role that I want to create in this world – compassionate leadership.

The dream knew before I did. Real security isn’t found in the things you can touch, but in the things you feel, the people you empower, the lives you impact and the things you create. And just like the voice that awoke me on the couch:

I dared to say ‘yes.’