For My Mam — The Woman Behind the Beginning
Today, Nova Rising Soul opens its doors.
But today was never chosen because it was convenient.
Today is the 4th of August.
Today, my mam should have been 70.
And somehow, it felt right that something born from one of the hardest chapters of my life should begin on a day that belongs to her.
Because the truth is, Nova Rising Soul wouldn’t exist if my life hadn’t fallen apart.
Being with my mam as she took her last breath was one of those moments that changed me forever.
There are some moments in life that divide everything into before and after. That was one of mine.
I’ve come to think of grief as love with nowhere to go.
All that love doesn’t disappear just because the person you love is no longer here. It stays with you. At first, you don’t know what to do with it or where to put it.
And maybe healing isn’t about learning how to let that love go.
Maybe it’s about finding somewhere new for it to live.
For me, some of that love lives here.
In the things I’m creating. In the way I’m learning to live. In the things I hope Nova Rising Soul might give to somebody else who finds themselves trying to navigate their own before and after.
My mam isn’t here to see this website go live. She won’t get to see the ridiculous number of hours I’ve spent obsessing over tiny details, changing things, changing them back again, dreaming bigger, doubting myself and then deciding to keep going anyway.
I wish she could.
God, I wish she could.
But she’s woven into it.
She’s in the reason I understand that life isn’t something we should keep putting off for another day.
She’s in the reminder to use the nice things, wear the outfit, take the photograph, say I love you, laugh loudly, rest when you need to and stop waiting for some imaginary perfect moment to start living.
She’s in the part of me that knows how quickly life can change.
And she’s in the woman I’ve had to become since losing her.
Nova Rising Soul isn’t a place where I’m going to pretend I’ve got everything figured out.
I haven’t.
It’s being created by somebody who is still learning, still healing, still having difficult days and still finding her way back to herself.
That’s exactly why I wanted it to exist.
Because one of the most important things I’ve learned along the way is that we aren’t meant to do all of this alone.
Somewhere in the middle of everything falling apart, I found my people.
People who walked alongside me without trying to fix me. People who made me laugh on days when I didn’t feel much like laughing. People who listened, encouraged me, reminded me who I was and, sometimes, simply stayed.
Some came into my life as friendship. Some became something more. But together, they became my little inner circle — and they have been part of finding my way back to myself too.
That’s something I hope can grow here.
I don’t want Nova Rising Soul to simply be a website you visit, read something from and close.
I want it to become a community.
A place where like-minded people can find one another. Where you can realise that somebody else understands. Where we can share what we’ve learned, encourage each other and walk alongside one another for a little while.
Because sometimes healing is something we do quietly within ourselves.
And sometimes healing looks like finding the people who make the road feel a little less lonely.
I wanted to create the kind of corner of the world I needed when mine became too heavy.
Somewhere gentle.
Somewhere you don’t have to have all the answers.
Somewhere you can breathe for a minute and begin wherever you are.
Nova means a star that suddenly becomes brighter.
And maybe that’s what this chapter has been about.
Not becoming somebody completely new.
Finding the light that was still there underneath everything.
So today, on what should have been my mam’s 70th birthday, I’m opening the doors.
Not because the journey is finished.
Because it has begun.