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This is a poem we’ve shared a few times in class and on socials that keeps returning to us — Mud of this Moment by Danna Faulds. It’s one of those pieces that hits you kind of differently every time you read it. Lately, it’s been landing super deep for me, too.
The poem reminds us that truth doesn’t come from rising above the mess — it comes from being in it.
From letting ourselves be seen in all our humanness. From allowing the mud to be precisely what it is — not a flaw, but the foundation.
Like many of us living this thing called life… There has been mud.
The studio is still healing from losing Nin Yoga Castle Hill after our team poured their hearts and dollars into it. I am personally reminded every month how serious this was for the health of our business when I meet with my accountant. That being said, it is also what it is—an expensive lesson learnt.
Running the Australian Yoga & Wellness Festival this year was incredible and hard. It stretched every part of me, from logistics to energy to emotion. It was beautiful, messy, and real.
And on a more personal note, something else shaped my year in a way I’m still coming to understand, which I think also played a big part in why the festival was so hard in the first place.
Three months ago, I lost my dad.
It was my first time losing someone that close, and it cracked open a part of me I didn’t know existed.
I’ve been learning to sit with emotions I hadn’t felt before… not just sadness, but regret, tenderness, confusion, longing. I think about him every single day.
What’s surprised me is how my memories have started to shift. The less-than-perfect parts and (what my therapist likes to call) the “prickly” things he used to say are beginning to fade, but what remains is his spirit, his countless stories, which got more extravagant every single time they were told, his curiosity and constant researching his whole life up until his last few days, his love for dropping everything and just going on an adventure, and his very real not a care in the world for what anyone else thought of him mentality.
I wish I had opened up more to him in my late twenties and thirties. I was closed off for many reasons I won't bother going into. Strangely, however, I also feel closer to him now than ever.
What’s helped me personally?
Grief is different for everyone. This is just what seems to be working for me at this moment in time:
- Doing nothing, but still being with my family.
- Reading fiction (I'm a non-fiction addict, but I'm trying to trade some of the business strategy and self-psychology books for dragons)
- Learning a new skill (I was gifted a bass guitar over a year ago, but it's only after the festival that I've committed to 30 minutes a day, I'm around 2 ish weeks in for the habit, see if it sticks... kind of mentioning it here to help with accountability  )
- Letting the mess be the mess (physically and emotionally).
- Letting the mud stay mud — just like Danna talks about.
Continuing to work quietly (but still every day because I love what I do) behind the scenes at Nin Yoga and the soon-to-launch Kaya Academy has also been its own kind of medicine. There’s something about helping others find and maybe one day even share themselves, stillness and connection, that has kept me feeling like… me.
This isn’t a letter asking for sympathy. It’s just a moment of honesty — because that’s what our small business has always valued.. We’re not here to pretend life is all Vinyasa flows and mantra meditation.
We’re here to show up, even when it’s muddy.
So if you’re in a messy season, know you’re not alone.
Maybe the lotus is rooting down, quietly preparing to bloom.
Maybe this moment, messy and real, is enough.
Annika xx
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