The Miranda Holder

If you've landed somewhere beautiful this week and felt strangely flat… this one's yours.

I used to treat those first days as a problem to fix. I'd be restless… checking my phone every five minutes, unable to sit still… so I'd try to FORCE myself to relax and have fun. Which never works, because relaxing and fun are the two things you can't force. They only ever arrive by themselves. So I'd end up performing the happiness instead, because everyone's watching the woman who organised the whole thing, waiting for her to enjoy it.

What changed wasn't a technique. I stopped performing and started waiting. The holiday doesn't need you to be grateful on day one… it'll still be here when you arrive.

Save this for the day you land.

Love Mx

The medicine we need isn't always what we want to hear - but it always comes at the right time.

Call it the universe, call it your guides, call it whatever lets you hear it, but the messages are there - you just have to notice them.

So once I got over my indignation and anger, I was able to find the gold - this was exactly the wake-up call I needed, the reminder that I was pushing too hard, setting myself up for disaster - and I'm so grateful for this person for being the angel in disguise, which was precisely what I needed at that time.

I firmly believe there is a reason for everything, we are all gently being nudged along our path.

The question is, are you tuning in? ✨

For a while, I totally gave up. I was angry, I was in 'victim mode', thinking 'why me?', feeling sorry for myself, under the pain team at the hospital and swigging way too much Oramorph like it was water. I didn't want to face the world, I didn't want to accept my reality and I couldn't see a way out.

It was as if everything I cherished had been taken away from me in an instant. I was partly paralysed, stuck in a wheelchair, and the road to recovery was not only long, it was questionable. There was no guarantee.

I despised myself, the state I was in, the fact that I could barely do anything for myself. I felt unable to be a proper mother to Jack and Lily, who were then 4 and 6, I was nothing but a drain on my husband... and funnily enough, as I was in such a dark space, my world started to get even worse. Precious family plans went wrong, we suffered additional challenges as a young family and a feud began with my parents which lasted several years.

Then one day I caught sight of myself in the mirror. A ghost looked back at me. Pale, ghostly white, with a bird's nest for hair, huge under-eye circles and a puffy, bloated face. I didn't recognise myself.

In that moment everything changed.

I realised I had two options. To accept my fate, schedule the amputation and live with its consequences. Or to fight.

Thank goodness I chose the latter.

I won't pretend it was easy, but the real work started that day. Grit, determination and pure bloody-mindedness took everything I had left, but slowly, very slowly, things started to improve.

It took years. But look at where I am now.

The lesson? YOU have the power to change the status quo, not a man in a white coat. Just because you are told an outcome doesn't make it real. We all have that choice.

I didn't realise it at the time, but this was literally the law of attraction in action... once I changed my frequency and my focus, my world changed too. It's one of the reasons I went on to train as a law of attraction coach, and I haven't stopped living it since. More on that later.

But please, please, don't EVER let anyone hand you a full stop.

Mx

She never argued with the verdict. She just kept living... and the story changed around her.

The late Queen kept this brooch tucked away in a box for nearly fifty years, and Camilla has worn its meaning quietly for twenty, without ever once explaining herself.

Through decades of headlines that would have flattened most of us, she carried on with quiet dignity and calm, trusting that time would tell a truer story than any front page ever could... and my goodness, didn't it just.

So if you've ever felt written off, or quietly decided for... let her be your reminder that you don't owe anyone an argument. Some stories change simply because we refuse to stop living them. ✨

Send this to the woman who thinks her story's already been decided. 🦋

Love Mx

Here's what I didn't say in the reel.

The reason a ritual matters isn't superstition, and it isn't really style either. When life takes things from you, and this past year took plenty from her, the things you repeat become the things that hold you. The same colour, at the same tournament, year after year, isn't a fashion choice. It's a handrail.

We all have one, or we used to. The scent you wore in your happiest years. The earrings that went on before every big day. That brightly coloured top which lifts your complexion and makes you feel bulletproof. The small, repeated thing that says: whatever else has changed, I am still here.

If you've lost yours somewhere in the busyness, you're allowed to go back for it. That isn't living in the past. That's remembering who you are.

Send this to the friend who's finding her way back to herself this year. 🤍

Mx