Jane Simmons

Everyone says "she'll be right" like it happens overnight. It doesn't. It happens slowly, then all at once, one ordinary Tuesday when you realise you laughed without guilt, slept without dread, and got through the day without falling apart. She'll be right isn't a dismissal. It's a promise you make to yourself and keep, one messy day at a time.

Your body has carried you through things that would have broken most. Honour it — not with punishment or perfection, but with rest, water, movement when you can. It's not the body you had at 25 and that's okay. It's the body that showed up. That counts for everything.

They're watching how you handle hard things. Not whether you fall apart — but whether you get back up. You don't need to be unbreakable. You just need to be real. Show them what resilience actually looks like: imperfect, tired, and still going.

No one gets to tell you when to be over it. Not well-meaning friends, not the calendar, not the part of you that thinks you should be further along by now. Grief moves at its own speed. Give it room. It doesn't mean you're stuck — it means you loved something real.

It doesn't fix the problem. But it gives you five minutes to breathe, two hands wrapped around something warm, and a reason to stop. Sometimes that's enough to find the next step. Never underestimate the power of stopping.

You don't owe anyone a neat story with a tidy ending. Some chapters are still being written. Some wounds aren't for public consumption. Healing is yours — quiet, private, and on your own terms.

You've been through enough now to know who shows up and who disappears. Trust that knowledge. You've earned the right to be selective with your time and energy. The people who stayed during the hard years — keep those ones close.

Australia doesn't soften itself for anyone. Harsh sun, red dirt, floods, fires — and still, impossibly, beautiful. You're built the same way. You don't have to apologise for being too much or too rough around the edges. You're just real.

Every thing you've survived, every thing you've learned, every morning you got up when you didn't want to — that goes into them. Not as burden, but as blueprint. You are making women who will know how to get through things because they watched you.

Somewhere along the way we got told that slowing down means giving up. It doesn't. Rest is how you refill. A car can't run on an empty tank and neither can you. Taking a break isn't falling behind — it's the only way to actually keep going.

Looking back, the beach days, the school pickups, the kitchen table conversations — that was the life. Not the milestones. Not the big moments. The ordinary, unremarkable Tuesday afternoons that you almost didn't notice. Pay attention to those.

After everything — the diagnosis, the loss, the nights you weren't sure you'd get through — you're still here. That's not nothing. That's extraordinary. You don't need a medal or a speech. Just know that still being here, still trying, still showing up for your girls — that's the whole thing. That's enough.