I’m racing in Australia’s oldest triathlon in November with the aim to fundraise $15,000 for the Black Dog Institute throughout my journey to race day.

Link to fundraiser page

The Black Dog Institute is an independent not-for-profit globally renowned mental health research institute connected to UNSW Sydney. They are the only medical research institute in Australia that investigates mental health across the lifespan—from childhood to adulthood.

With suicide as the leading cause of death for Australians aged 15-44, access to funding for research aimed to target prevention and treatment of mental illness is integral to supporting the health and wellness of young Australians.

Read more about The Black Dog Institute

I’ll be racing in the Nepean Triathlon in November 2026 and documenting my journey of training for the event on social media, alongside the daily regime of being an athlete on the Australian Rowing Team preparing to race at the World Championships in August this year. Throughout this next 8 months I hope through sharing my experience to race day I’m able to raise $15,00 for this cause which I’m so immensely passionate about.

This is a cause I’m immensely passionate about and look forward to throwing absolutely everything I can into training and fundraising for this event.

The short story long

Over the last few years I’ve started to write about and share my personal experience dealing with mental illness; in particular depression, self harming and suicidal ideation.

While these have been challenging to navigate it’s because of the support of medical professionals in joint with the incredible family and friends around me that I’ve been able to manage them.

Without access to treatment I don’t know where I would be today, and I hope that through raising funds for The Black Dog Institute, many more researchers will be able to facilitate development and access to life changing support for other Australians.

While its not a pleasant thing to talk about or comfortable to share, I do truly believe one of the best ways to de-stigmatise mental illness is through sharing lived experience and if I’m able to contribute to someone else’s journey to seeking support than I want to play my part.

I’m fortunate enough to be healthy and in a place where I can take on the challenge of throwing myself into a new pursuit of my choosing. So when the idea to race in a triathlon was thrown around by some of my friends at training, pairing it with the opportunity to fundraise seemed like an absolute no-brainer.

I worked with the Black Dog Institute through the AIS Mental Fitness Program and as a result was already aware of their work in research into mental illness and suicide prevention, clinical care and evidence-based education programs for health professionals and schools. Their work is absolutely vital in continuing to pave the way forward in development prevention, treatment and education on mental illness and I couldn’t think of a better cause to support.

I would be lying if I didn’t say this pursuit slightly scares me; both in terms of the physical demands and also the nature of putting myself and my experiences out there for the world to see.

But I like to think the fact it scares me is a good thing.

Growth never occurred in a place of comfort and a mantra I’ve kept close over the last few years is I refuse to not capitalise on the opportunities afforded to me.

So I’m putting aside any fear and doubt and diving into this challenge head first, a fact made significantly easier knowing the purpose of The Black Dog Institute has been integral in ensuring this little girl kept fighting.

Baby steps

I’ve been slowly chipping away at getting into the swing of training over the last few weeks, along with getting organised to officially launch this fundraising campaign. It’s been an adjustment learning to balance 10ishhrs of extra exercise on top of our already pretty packed training schedule but I’m having a blast so far. Shoutout to everyone who’s already sat on the bike with me, run around the river loop or watched me struggle up and down the pool lanes.

Its a funny situation to be training for what can be considered an incredibly amateur event when you spend 99% of your time around some of the worlds most phenomenal athletes training for a World Championship and Olympic Games (something which you’re also training for but in quite a different manner).

I can’t explain how overwhelmingly encouraging and supportive everyone around the HPNTC has been so far with my efforts and I am so grateful to each and everyone one of them. As an added bonus I’m hoping this pursuit will also help make me a better coxswain by giving me a more structured understanding of what it feels like to be pursuing a physical goal, as well as bring me closer to my teammates by being able to jump in and get involved with as many of their sessions as my body/logistics will allow.

The next 8 months is definitely going to be a challenge to manage but I’m excited to get stuck in. Despite my brain at times trying to make me believe otherwise I know I am capable of doing hard things so I’m ready to give this my absolute best.

How you can support

• Donate via the link below :)

  Donate here!

• Follow along my journey to race day and stay involved in fundraising opportunities on instagram @hayleyvebunt

• Read up on who the Black Dog institute is and speak to others about its work when the opportunity presents itself

• Reach out if you want to be involved in any way to contributing to this campaign/have any ideas to assist!

  • If there’s any business who would be interested in sponsoring the event please reach out to me via email hayleymverbunt@gmail.com

Thank you to everyone who has already shared their support for this campaign, it means the world and I’m so incredibly lucky to have so many amazing people in my life to support and enable me to pursue challenges such as this <3 I love you all and can’t wait for the next 8 months!

Hi! I’d apologise for the long time between posts, however when I started this Substack I explicitly stated I wasn’t going to place any pressure on the consistency of its posting. The purpose of this endeavour has always been to both help myself and to help others, something that I don’t think regularity of posting is essential to.

I simply wanted to write when I felt like I had something to say, and between now and my last post there hasn’t been a whole lot of that - which is something I’ve been uncharacteristically okay with! However the New Year and its inevitable promises of reinvention and revitalisation have prompted some interesting conversations with friends and moments of self reflection, some of which I thought could be useful for others.

So without further ado, here is my first article of 2026! Can’t promise when the next one will be but learning to live with a bit of unpredictability is always good right? ;)

New beginnings

Starting a New Year is usually characterised by the popular wave of desire to redefine, recalibrate or revitalise your sense of identity and/or your habits. I’ve never been the biggest fan of New Year’s resolutions but I do appreciate the sense of opportunity that comes with the start of a new beginning. So while I didn’t want to set an absolute resolution for 2026, I have been thinking a lot lately about trying to be more purposeful in my mindset (both through challenges and through the everyday). I’ve tried to put a more concrete wording to this shift; a “not-a-new-years-resolution” resolution so to speak.

And thus my kinda/somewhat/sort of/not really/maybe resolution for 2026 is …

Where did this come from?

The idea of personal values is one I used to think was pretty wish-washy and didn’t necessarily understand how to apply to my own life. I remember my psych sitting me down a number of years ago now and trying to get me to pick out my own personal values, from a collection of dozens printed on pieces of card scattered across the floor of their office. It seemed stupid having to pick from a mass of words which were all of undeniable importance to being a textbook “good human”.

Respect, resilience, dependability, empathy, commitment, honour, integrity, honesty, loyalty…

The options went on and on.

There were so many to choose from and they all felt equally like something I should care about. The reason I had ended up being tasked with this activity of defining my personal values was because at the time I was engaging in behaviours that weren’t especially healthy or conducive to preserving my wellness. I knew what I was doing in theory was “wrong” (starving or cutting yourself isn’t something you decide to do because its good for you) but my sense of self preservation was so low I didn’t really care, or even know how to care anymore.

Have you ever had something you’ve been tasked with that you know you should do (like studying for a test or having a difficult conversation), and know you can do, but despite how glaringly obvious the necessity of it is, you have zero motivation to do it?

Thats what I felt like.

I was doing things I shouldn't. I knew what I needed to do instead. But I just didn’t want to.

The notion they were “wrong” or that they were hurting me just wasn’t a strong enough reason for me to be able to stop.

Defining my personal values was supposed to help provide a stronger reason as to change my behavioural patterns. So that when I was deciding whether to do or not to do something, I wasn’t thinking about whether it was right or wrong, bur rather whether it aligned with the sort of person I wanted to be and what principles I valued as an individual.

Not because someone told me I should, but because I chose to.

I remember going through the dozens of cards scattered across my psych’s office and eventually narrowing them down to 5 values that for whatever reason stood out to me and I felt a sense of connection to. She typed them up on her computer and printed them out of me to have a physical copy of.

I’ve had this print-out glued in a journal for 4 years now.

The principle of trying to live by your values isn’t foolproof, but it does help provide guidelines to decision making and actions when your brain isn’t always trustworthy.

As I’ve touched in my other articles (plus a new one coming soon ;), my brain can be a serious culprit at creating unhelpful thoughts. And to help combat this I try and practice letting my actions be guided by these values (but I’m certainly far from perfect at actually done this). My values are meant to be something concrete which I know is helpful to guiding me being the kind of person I want to be, rather than just letting the fleeting thoughts floating around in my brain dictate my decisions.

So for 2026 I want to try and be more consistent in being guided by my values.

Sharing my values

I wanted to share some of the ways I feel connected to my values nowadays and how I try and correlate them to my everyday.

There are obviously many many important values when trying to be a good athlete, friend, student, teammate, family member and just an overall good person. The values I hold close undoubtedly extend further than just the 5 I’ve shared. However I think having had to go through the process of selecting them and verbalising to someone else why they’re important to me has meant they will always be special ones (and hence the ones I’m sharing today).

So here are my 5 and why they’re meaningful to me!

Joy

Joy for me is equally about the big and the small moments.

In terms of small moments, I find so much joy in my morning ritual of getting up early to allow myself time to make a cup of Moccona and park up on our living room couch, enjoy the sunrise over the river and read my current book. I do it pretty much every single day, and although it may cost me an extra 20-30 minutes of sleep, I absolutely love going to bed excited to wake up to my coffee, sunrise and book in the morning.

Not only is it my early morning Moccona that sparks a bit a joy into everyday, but when I inevitably have my 2nd (and maybe 3rd and even sometimes 4th oops) Moccona of the day, it reminds me of my Mum. And my Auntie Sue. And one of my best friends Amanda. And so many others who love a cup of instant coffee just as much as I do and I’ve had the pleasure of sharing one with. It’s like getting a 2-for-1 deal being reminded of their wonderful presence and getting to enjoy my favourite warm beverage.

While small things like cups of coffee and reading books bring everyday pockets of joy, I won’t neglect the big events which absolutely douse me in it.

Travelling, competing overseas, celebrations, concerts, campaigns, racing, events, being apart of a team

I’m incredibly lucky I get to spend so much of my time on endeavours, activities and adventures that bring immeasurable amounts of joy to my life, and their existence and the value they bring give me reminders as to why its worth it when things get hard.

It would also be negligible of me not to mention the most overwhelming and consistent source of joy in my life, all the amazing people in it.

Particular shout out over the last year living in a house with 4 other girls, I didn’t think my world was capable of being encased in so much fun and laughs. But everyday spent in this house brings me more smiles and joy than I ever thought possible.

Kindness

Kindness is a characteristic I always admire in others. To me it’s the colour yellow, the feeling of warmth and the embodiment of hugs and sunshine.

To be kind is to see people, and to show them that you see.

It’s not only words but actions, both big and small.

It’s giving up your seat on the bus, its smiling at strangers, its complimenting your friend’s, its providing for your loved ones and its showing patience and empathy when people need it most.

Kindness is not only about showing it to others but showing it to yourself. This is a specific practice I’ve struggled with a lot over the years but I realise now its much harder to show up as the best version of you and kind to those around you if you cannot be kind to yourself.

While I like to think I understand how to be kind to others (I’m definitely not perfect but I always hope to try my best), learning how to be kind to myself is a work in progress.

I’ve spoken about this before but I try engaging with the idea of past or future version of Hayley when I can’t quite connect with the current version of me. My self preservation levels have gotten to less than ideal places in past, but trying to show kindness to a younger version of me who still inhabits the person I am today does provide some assistance.

I want to be able to show her the kindness I know every child deserves.

This was something I’ve really tried to resonate with when I’ve dealt with periods of self harming in the past.

Even if I could tolerate it as a current version of me, I wouldn’t want to do it to her. Conjointly, I try and not hold resentment for the version of me that felt it was the only way I could keep going and the only way I knew how to keep myself afloat.

She was doing the best she could and I want to show her kindness for that too.

Courage

To me courage is interwoven in the saying "don’t be a coward”.

This has been my unofficial mantra since I was 17 years old. It helped me muster the courage to show up and cox at the NTC for the first time, how I got myself through the nerves and stress of AUS team trials, how I got through hard times showing up in campaigns and how even now I buckle down to get hard things done.

This saying was introduced to me by some of my favourite mentors and the idea of courage to me is, and forever will be, about making them and others who have poured so much into my development as an athlete, and human, proud.

I want to be courageous enough to do hard things and take risks. To fail to show courage feels like a betrayal to them and to myself, so I will always aim to let it guide my actions. It doesn’t always feel comfortable to show courage but I’ve never ever regretted trying. Things may not have turned out the way I wanted but the learnings from the experience have always made it worthwhile.

I’m so incredibly lucky to spend so much time surrounded by amazing women who are characterised by their constantly ability to show courage and face challenge. The girls of HPNTC are a constant source of inspiration and reiterate to me daily the importance of being brave.

Courage also isn’t always loud. Courage can be vulnerability, it can be taking a stand and it can be persevering.

It will look different to every person and in different situations, but its existence is what’s most important.

Growth & learning

I like to think growth and learning is what leads my everyday. I’ve mentioned before the importance of progress over perfection (I even have a whole article on it if you’re interested ;)

To me valuing ‘growth and learning’ is a more simplistic articulation of this philosophy. I want to be able to experience and learn new things, to improve and to grow in all that I do. I love pursuing new things and trying my best to reach new personal standards.

Over the last 12 months this has manifested in lots of enjoyment, growth and learning in the kitchen with absolute love of cooking for my housemates! It’s one of my favourite parts of everyday getting to come home and cook up a meal for us all to share together.

More recently it’s has also been getting into riding! I’m by no means any good at it but I’m loving getting to experience something new and am so excited to keep growing and enjoy it more and more with my friends and teammates. It helps bring me closer to them and better understand their experiences, something which I hope will make me better at my job coxing too.

Being willing to grow and learn also means you’re willing to challenge yourself and your beliefs, and willing to accept change (something that ties into my final value). Understanding my own appreciation for growth and learning has made me more willing to embrace difference and difficulty in the pursuit of more. It keeps life fun and interesting and makes me excited to try something new, while also encompassing the desire to be better and push towards my goals.

Acceptance

This final value may be the most obscure of all of mine and the one I find most difficult to contextualise/articulate my own personal meaning for. However despite this I remember feeling so strongly drawn to it when presented with the large array of other potential options for values 4 years ago.

To me acceptance is about being at peace with what was, what is and what will be. Being able to accept yourself and your actions at any of these given stages without judgment or contempt, and simply look to them to be helpful or unhelpful tools to guide you in future.

Trying to practice acceptance and meet myself where I’m at has made a massive difference in my ability to coexist and diffuse from my thoughts and emotions, rather than letting them or situations I find myself in dictating how I perceive myself and my actions.

Acceptance to me is also about how you embrace both the good and the bad.

To be able to accept all the positives in life with gratitude and appreciation, while also being able to accept the negatives with composure and responsiveness.

I like the idea of being able to accept the cards you have been dealt and trying to make the most of them irrespective of circumstance. This is often easier said than done but thats what practice is for.

Conclusions

So there you have it! The 5 values that little 19 year old Hayley picked that I’m still holding close to me today.

My articulation of why I’ve chosen them may not make sense to everyone but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter; as long as they make sense to me and hold weight in grounding my actions and behaviours.

I don’t know if in another 4 years I’ll still have the same selected values or if I will have pivoted to new ones. The most important things part of this exercise is ensuring they’re ones I’ve chosen and I can understand their importance to me personally and apply them to my everyday life. Doing so ensures I have guiding principles to help navigate life when my brain and its thoughts aren’t being so helpful.

If you want to investigate your own personal values, there is heaps of lists and quizzes online to help guide you! It’s a great activity to journal on or even complete in a team environment.

While I may not have a specific New Year’s resolution for 2026, I’m excited to see what this new 12 month period will bring! Ready to try and embrace its challenges with the reassurance I know what I hold close to me when things do get tough, as well as being ready to try and appreciate the good in everyday.

I am in no way, shape or form perfect at this process, nor ever expect to be. I simply want to try my best, whatever that may look like for me.

So here’s to a New Year and to experiencing it's journey trying to live by my values more than by my thoughts :)

This is one of those situations where it feels like only yesterday we were battling with the 40 degree heat, saturated with sweat, living out of our suitcases and fuelled 90% by a combination of fried rice, chocolate milk and snack room yoghurt bows. And yet simultaneously boarding the bus/plane to leave Shanghai was almost certainly a lifetime ago.

It’s taken me a while (evidently by this publish date relative to racing) to articulate my thoughts on this regatta, my experience and what I wanted to share. Apologies in advance for this article’s length but I hope you enjoy the snippet into what racing at a World Championship regatta looks like from the inside :)

Destination Shanghai

Racing in China is unlike anything I (or the vast majority of our team) has ever experienced. We’re extremely fortunate to be afforded the opportunity pretty much every year, twice a year, to head to Europe for an international racing season (not to flex but I’ve gone 5 seperate times since 2022 for rowing, with the longest stint being nearly 4 months). As a result, we’re very used to this passage of transit and adapting to the climate, cultures, varying cuisines, hotel set ups etc of training and competing in the European continent.

We’re pretty much pros at a Hot Girl Euro Summer (except its like 98% rowing, maybe 2% holibobs if you’re lucky).

So suddenly heading to Asia to race seems like a fairly big curveball. Some of the squad had raced there for the Head of the Shanghai Regatta over the years, but never for a World Rowing organised event such as a World Champs. So we were going in pretty much blind to what this regatta could be like.

A fundamental part of preparing for big competitions such as a Worlds is looking to enhance your crew’s consistency in preparations, processes, and hopefully as a flow on, your performances. So heading to an unknown environment can challenge this practice of creating “set plays” in your work.

Luckily for us (thanks to our INCREDIBLE support staff and team manager), our team’s set up for the regatta was absolutely unreal and was prepared to combat any unknown challenges the Shanghai racing environment would try and throw at us . We were staying a mere 5 minutes from the course in a lovely hotel situated in a botanical garden style park. We were sharing it with a few other rowing nations too such as New Zealand and Lithuania, a welcomed fun touch having some different countries to see at meal times.

The course set up reminded me most closely of the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium in Paris where we raced in 2024. It had a large competitors/organising committee building situated overlooking the course with grandstands running parrell down one of its sides. An extremely cool part of the Shanghai set up was the inclusion of entire 2nd 2km course next to the racing track?! The designated warm up course allowed for ample space to prepare on water prior to racing (although the weather of Shanghai had other ideas …). We had facial recognition scanners to enter the course, portaloos with aircon and music playing capabilities, a Taj Mahal sized team tent, 4 slushy dispensers working overtime and pretty much unlimited access to refrigerator water and iced towels. In terms of racing set ups, this place was about as elite as at team could get.

We are truly the most well equipped national federation on the World Rowing circuit. The RA support staff deserve endless praise for their work in getting our set up the immaculate level that it is.

Hot

This year more than ever we were all insanely appreciative of the work of our support staff due to Shanghai’s heat and humidity.

When I say this was unlike any other heat I’ve experienced with rowing, I well and truly mean it. We had days were we were dealing with the equivalent of 45 degree temperatures when the humidity was factored in. Very quickly it became apparent that a key part of organising our training leading into racing would be operating around the heat as best we could, as well as aiming to maximise our recovery when we were out of it. This meant committing to rowing as early in the day as we could, and keeping any rows later in the day to being as time efficient as humanly possible to stay out of the oppressive amounts of sunshine. The heat also meant the regatta lake’s water was nuclear green looking in colour and dangerously contaminated with algae. We had to be fiercely protective of all our water bottles and any equipment touching the course’s water; failure to keep everything sanitised meant almost guaranteed exposure to a bout of gastro or other race-threatening illness.

I unfortunately ended up with a minor case of heatstroke after spending a bit too long out in the sun one of our early training days. An early morning run, followed by a row, then hours rigging in the heat (missing our designated meal slots in the process), walking back to the accom, followed by another row in the sun apparently wasn’t super helpful when trying to stay cool. After a full 8 hour day in 40 plus degree heat, I ended up a bit worse for wear and had to be revived with slushies and gummy bears while sitting in front of our AC unit at the course for an hour while I was well and truly out of it. Wouldn’t recommend as the ideal form of race preparation.

Cool, calm and collected

Besides battling the heat, our other major variable to manage leading into racing was injury and illness. The reality of elite sports is that more often than not your team is balancing keeping everyone as fit and healthy as possible, while simultaneously looking to push the group to their physical limits. Being in an 8, you have double the amount of rowers of any other boat class, and as a result double the chance of someone managing health issues at any given point. This World Champs was no different.

It meant for us heading into racing we were shuffling people between seating/different athletes in and out of the boat to ensure we were getting our final bits of training in, while also allowing those who needed rest and recovery to get the time out of the boat they needed. After the shuffling we managed throughout the World Cup campaigns, I liked to think our crew was pretty well prepared to navigate the constant changing of the crew around. However it is still an added variable to an already stressful situation as you get closer and closer to racing.

You will inevitably have the nagging thought in the back of your head of “what if this doesn’t work?” when you do finally shift into your final racing combo and the game of musical seats ceases. You’re always subconsciously promising yourself there’s a few extra seconds of speed to be found when you do slot into that final line up, so when you finally reach that point it can feel slightly make or break.

Lucky for us it definitely felt like a “make”. Finally locking into our racing combination it felt like we had made it; our rhythm was there, speed was there, racing was upon us and we were ready. Final race preparation sessions done, boat set up completed, race plan prepared and we were raring to go.

New pressures

Our heat was scheduled for the Thursday morning. A solid week and a half after we had arrived in China, allowing plenty of time for us to build anticipation towards racing. This year’s progression format had a drastic difference to any other with the removal of the repechage system. Rather than having the fallback of an additional race if your heat didn’t quite go to plan, now your heat was absolutely do or die. Progression was based on Top 2 placings, followed by next fastest times.

A brutal system we saw in full force as our Australian Women's 4 were just painstakingly short of progressing to the A Final after their heat a few days earlier.

To match with the intensity of the new progression system was the rather stacked field of W8+ competitors. The largest number of entries the category had seen in years, we knew it would be ridiculously close to see whether or not we could make the A-Final and have a shot at a medal.

Our heat had us up against the Dutch and the Romanians; two absolute powerhouses who had defeated us earlier in the season. We knew it would be a tough battle to get close to them, also well aware we had the Canadian W8+ on right (the Silver Medalists from the Paris Olympics) who were making their season debut; a very possible threat. Not only did we have tough competition in our heat, we knew all the other crews in Heat 2 had the potential of posting some blistering times and risked knocking us out of the A Final even if managed to secure a 3rd place finish in our heat.

Go time

Heading to race we kept it simple; minimise our time on the water during the warm up to mitigate the heat and focus on hitting a solid mid race rhythm. We knew if we could nail those two things we had a shot at making the A-Final.

The race afternoon rolled around and the Australian Team Room was bustling with energy as the M8 and W8 both preparing for their first hit outs. I like to give everyone a high five or fist bump before we push off the pontoon, as a last opportunity to look face to face with my crewmates before we race; the next time I see them we will either be headed to a World Championship A Final (for many their first ever) or have missed out of the opportunity to race for a meal.

A pinch point in our journey as athletes and as teammates, I always want to make sure I take that added moment to be able to acknowledge each of my 8 amazing teammates individually. To appreciate that we’re in this together and have totally trust for each other in what’s about to come.

High fives and fist bumps completed, we pushed off into the chemically green waters and headed to the warm up lake. We were strategically the very last of the W8s to hit the water, boating around 25 minutes before our start time, allowing us to head up to the startline just in the presence of each other.

World Championship or Olympic warm up lakes have a distinctly different feel to that of any other international regatta you attend. Rather than the condensed racing schedule of a World Cup or Henley where there a multitude of races every hour with hundreds of boats at times on the same stretch of warm up area; season finale regattas have a much smaller number of races per day (particularly as the week progresses). As a result, the warm up area feels barren by comparison to the bustling waters our crew had dealt with before.

The oppressive heat glaring down on the open lake combined with the faint echo of each 8’s coxswain calling through race pieces makes for an eerie space. I think we were all thankful to be relatively alone on our transit to the startline having boated behind everyone else. Without other crews we had minimised distractions to assist with trying to internally calm ourselves. The boat was moving well through each of our warm up pieces and I could feel the nerves of the crew starting to slowly subside as we headed up to the blocks.

Rituals

I’ve always found the 2hrs prior to race start time my least favourite of an entire campaign. That 2hrs before is spent doing mental gymnastics as you wrestle with endless possibilities of how the race could play out and the what can seem like a million things to be aware of/what you need to execute. But as we come closer and closer to the start time, the stress starts to melt away as the list of things to focus on condenses. Minute by minute, stroke by stroke the fixation narrows to just that first second of the race. Everything else is taken care of at that point and you just get to be totally present as you wait for the countdown to end. It’s an oddly calming feeling being sat in the blocks 5 minutes till go time in juxtaposition to the 115 minutes prior.

Paige and I for all the years we’ve raced together have had a handshake we do at the startline of every race. It’s my favourite pre race ritual and is something that always grounds me before starting - no matter what I know we’re in this together and she will do anything to try and get us over the line in front.

Handshake completed. Bow locked into the start system. Roll call commenced. 153 days since our selection waiting for this exact moment.

And just like that we were off.

It was an absolutely blast of a race, I think it was one of my favourite I’ve ever had the privilege of being involved in across my entire career.

Although the times posted from all crews weren’t fast by any means, we had managed to stay close to the Dutch and Romanians the whole way down the track; something that a few months ago had seemed out of reach while we batted injury, illness, changing seating and struggling to get our groove as a crew. We’d manage to secure a 3rd place finish while minimising the gap between us and 1st/2nd.

It was a great first hit out and we coudln’t have asked to do much more as our first ever race in our combination. However now came the agonising wait for Heat 2 to race to see if our time would place us into the A Final.

I’ll never forget the pit in my stomach as we waited for the times of that 2nd race to be posted. I felt hollow with angst as the minutes of us waiting with our boat stretched on and on; an agonisingly drawn out process for the results to be finalised.

I also know I won’t ever forget the all consuming tidal wave of relief, excitement and pride when we heard the race times announced over the regatta speaker system. We had qualified for the A Final.

4th fastest qualifier!

5 girls in the crew would make their Senior World Champs A-Final debut!

We were absolutely stoked. Although only the heat, it was a huge win for us after the turbulent season and unconventional run in to racing we had endured. We had done it; we would be racing for a medal come Saturday.

Final

2 days later we would be lined up again to race the A Final of the 2025 World Championships. Anyone who’s been in a medal race at a major regatta can relate to the feeling of anticipation, adrenaline and apprehension you feel heading to compete. Years of work prior as an individual and an entire season together as a team come down to just over 6 minutes of racing.

While the race day ran very similarly to that of our heat, sadly in the final we weren’t able to build as strong of a race. We gave it absolutely everything and put ourselves in a position early to try and secure a spot on that elusive podium, but as is the reality of sport, it just wasn’t enough this time around. We’d taken a risk and it hadn’t paid off. A somber mood encased us as we sat on the pontoon after we finished our race. Faces dripping in an indistinguishable mix of sweat and tears, we shared tight hugs and words of heartfelt thanks for each and every one of the members of our crew. Although the performance may not have been enough to get us on the podium, I don’t think anyone could have left anymore out on the race track.

We derigged the boat with the company and assistance of our other teammates who had already finished racing, and shared similar words of commiseration and support with the M8 who soon joined us after their incredible effort for 4th place finish.

We headed back to our hotel to debrief with our coaches, share our thoughts and feelings about the race and the regatta as a whole, before heading out to enjoy an evening together with the rest of our team members. Racing had come to a close for the vast majority of the ART and with that we were finally able to relax and enjoy each other's company without the looming pressures of racing.

The next 24hrs comprised of pack up, celebrations, watching racing, presentations and goodbyes. Some of us would go onto race the Head of the Shanghai International Regatta the following week, others onto holidays and some straight back to Australia. Our final evening all together was spent at the traditional RA Family and Friends Function in the heart of Shanghai, with the incredible view of the city’s technicolored skyline in the night acting as the backdrop for McViley Pearce Pin presentation and our final farewells to each other.

Shanghai was undeniably the most unique regatta environment I’ve ever raced in and I think possibly my favourite too. It’s racing was exciting, the regatta set up amazing (despite the heat) and I had a blast being in a completely new location with our team. Although not quite the results we were aiming for, it provided a foundation for our notably young team to propel from in future years. Its learnings have been invaluable and we know what we need to do to shift the dial over the next 12 months. It's undoubtedly left all of us excited and determined for our preparation of next seasons racing.

As our Head Coach likes to say, we want to be “not just different, but better” come 2026.

Thanks for reading and for all those who have supported us throughout the season. It had its fair share of highs and lows, as every season does, but I’m so incredibly grateful that I get to call this sport my job and for the phenomenal group of athletes and staff around me on this team. Always a privilege and never a chore, I’m so excited to see what the future holds for us - HVB <3

Within these 10 days I’ve done the drive from Sydney to Melbourne, spent time with family, enjoyed outings with friends, dropped into the rowing sheds a few times (plus racing a regatta), tried desperately to catch up on uni work and slowly start sifting through all the life admin that has piled up during my travels.

I’d say these activities are apart of a very standard holiday period for most of us as we return home for a break from the National Training Centres/AUS Team duties. A routine so well rehearsed it can start to feel a bit like auto pilot once you’ve done it a few times over.

Except for some reason this time feels slightly different.

And not just to me it seems, but to many other athletes who are also on their “annual breaks”.

There’s a subtle layer of added tension to this return. A dull pain, always lingering and bringing just that little bit of friction to every movement. Each interaction feeling that little bit tighter, a little bit more strained. It’s uncomfortable. Not overtly and not unbearably, but that faint grab always exists.

The more I thought about this sensation and what I think it means, the more one core idea seemed to resonate. The only way I can really describe it is a bit like I (and maybe others in a similar situation) have outgrown “home” as our default comfort zone. The place that used to be the designated rest point, the environment associated with our time off and time of holiday, now doesn’t bring the same degree of revitalisation, rest and comfort that it used to.

So here’s my 2 cents on maybe why this is all occurring now, both as a general overview and how I personally align with it.

As I unpack this concept I want to acknowledge there are many different contributing factors to feeling this way and that it is by no means a blanket rule for anyone who’s in a similar situation of “returning home”. This is merely me rambling with ideas and trying to wrap my head around what it is that I’m feeling and why, along with if there’s anything that can be done to help mitigate the turbulence of this period.

How did I end up in this situation? Why doesn’t this environment bring as much comfort as it used to?

My space

Space in the context of “home” can mean two things; your own designated physical space within a home environment (eg having your own bedroom) and your metaphorical space to exist as an individual within that environment (eg having time to yourself or operating individually).

When you move away from home, you redefine these two ideas.

Physical space

You most likely end up creating a new space that is just for you; a new bedroom in a new house usually with a new group of people. For many of us it’s the largest amount of autonomy we’ve ever had over a physical space when we move out of home for the first time. While this can be immensely exciting it also creates the ability to draw otherwise undiscovered comparisons and parallels.

I prefer my shower at the other house.

I have all my favourite linen there.

I miss how the sunrise creeps through its shutters.

I like waking up to drink my morning coffee overlooking river.

My favourite photographs are hanging up on the walls and favourite teddy bear sits on my bed.

Small comparisons that can add up over time and contribute to a compounding sense of discomfort. When the place that you go to wind down and recover isn’t quite as enjoyable as the one you’re used to, it’s not exactly a pleasant feeling. For some of us the longer we’ve been gone, the wider this comparison can grow as you really start to lay your roots down someplace new.

Shifting more and more of the goodness of your space from one location to the other. This can mean you’re sometimes left with the carcus of what once was an inviting, comforting home space. The flesh and soul of its warmth has been relocated to someplace new and all your left with is with the scraps and bones. An empty space that only grows emptier as you stop adding any new signs of life in your absence.

This can obviously occur in the opposite manner, where your childhood or family home’s bedroom may be the best decompression zone you could ever ask for, unrivalled by any new house you may live in on your own. As such heading home may be a welcome luxury guaranteeing bountiful amounts of rest. Whichever way your preferences lean, alternating between the two can leave you longing for the superior.

Specifically for me?

As someone who was too scared to fully commit to laying down proper roots in Penrith my first 2 years of living there (definitely out of an irrational fear I would settle down only to be spontaneously kicked out of the NTC in a few months time), I wanted my new house to be different. So this last year I have properly committed to making it my space. Somewhere I feel safe, calm and enjoy being in. I’m pretty pleased with the setup I have and everything I’ve added over time, however now when I do head back to Melbourne the bedroom I spent ages 18-21 in feels disturbingly unsettling and uncomfortable by comparison.

Particularly when a large chunk of this period in my mind is stained with a lot of unhappiness, uncertainty, and exhaustion. Being back can be a subtle but painful reminder of what was. A thick smog of memories that lingers through my room, suffocating me when too long is spent in its presence. Not super fun and fab for a time thats meant to relaxing!

Metaphorical space

Along with learning to exist in a new space when you move away from home, you also learn to exist more in “your own space”.

With your own company, on your own time, by your own rules.

A natural part of growing up is gaining more independence and learning how to operate as an individual away from the confines of supervision. As a result coming home to the watchful eyes of parents/family can be a painful recoil of this independence. You shift from being an adult who operates on their own schedule and for the most part is solely responsible for keeping their day to day affairs in order, to being back in the orbit of your family household and needing to conform to its routine.

You normally cook your own dinner at 6pm? Too bad, family dinner starts at 7:30pm sharp.

You normally just leave the house without needing to tell anyone where you’re headed? Not so fast, you need to let your mum know why you’re taking the family car out.

It can be a minor or major difference depending on the specific regime of your household but I think it’s an adjustment every young adult returning home temporarily feels. Again on its own it might not make much of a difference, but when looking at the compounding factors contributing to a sense of discomfort in being back home on this break, I’d say this is a pretty important variable.

Specifically for me?

I’m maybe in a more unique position where my lifestyle the last few years I was living at home in Melbourne already started the fracturing of my own existence from my family’s routine. Because of rowing/coaching, I was leaving the house most mornings before most of the fam was awake (shoutout to mum for helping me get around most mornings!) and returning when they were already headed to bed. Not to mention jumping between countries and states every few weeks or months for different campaigns and trialling opportunities. As a result my family got pretty used to me existing slightly out of their orbit and dealing with the ebbs and flows of me coming and going while dealing with whatever mental state I was in at the time.

However despite lots of coming and going in my last few years in Melbourne, returning still proves as a jarring experience. Trying to reconcile my daily routines and behaviours while I’m temporarily home is still a challenge no matter how many times I’ve been able to practice it.

Routine

The biggest difference most people experience when they’re offered holidays or a break period is the shift in routine. If you think about when you used to go on school break, you’d suddenly go from having your day pretty much planned out hour by hour 8am to 4pm, to being free of nearly any and all obligations.

An absolute blast when you were a kid, but it’s now something that can bring a somewhat surprising sense of discomfort as an adult, particularly to us in an elite sporting context.

Routine is our bread and butter. A non-negotiable so cemented in our daily lives it can be at times debilitating to live without. Our weeks run similar to a school week, with designated sessions at scheduled times every single day, with food and rest breaks sprinkled in-between. There is added bits of homework that need to be done away from the sheds (stretching, treatment etc) plus additional meetings or workshopping to be done during breaks. This all ensures we’re able to load our weeks with as much work as possible while ensuring quality is maintained. A rigid structure that usually doesn’t lend itself to being adaptable, however it is what keeps us operating like a well oiled machine and capable of being consistent week-after-week, month-after-month, season-after-season.

While removing this structure can serve as an exciting novelty for a few days or even weeks, after a while without it the days can start to feel blurry and distinctively without purpose. And when your entire life is built on a having an extremely clear purpose (olympic medals, world championship podiums, national titles etc etc) drifting through your weeks this isn’t the most satisfying of feelings. When the initial rest and recovery of travelling home is over, and you’ve pencilled in the catch ups with friend and family, the time and space around this can feel a bit too copious for comfort. So many possibilities as to what to do, so much time you’re spending alone while family and friends are busy working/studying.

For some it’s an exciting opportunity to be in your own company and enjoy peace and quiet. For most I’d say it is an opportunity we haven’t quite mastered how to use, and as a result isn’t all that pleasant after a while.

Specifically for me?

I definitely fall in the latter. I love routine and I love the stability it provides me. Learning to exist without it again, even if temporarily, has not been an experience I’ve coped particularly well with.

Routine acts as safety mechanism for me and I for one am looking forward to gaining it and the predictability it provides back.

Loved ones

Moving someplace new usually shifts the circle of people you spend the majority of your days around, and this is especially true for us in rowing. Existing at one of the NTCs generally means you’re living in a bubble. Training, living, travelling, socialising, studying, eating and resting with the same people pretty much 7 days a week for a vast majority of the year.

You get so accustomed to existing with these people that stepping away from it for an extended period can leave you like a fish out of water. You’re in a different routine, in a difference space, and now without the people you’ve grown to be in-tune with nearly every second of the day. Another substantial contributor to the feeling of discomfort while being “on break”

Specifically for me?

I live in house with 4 other rowers and spend about every waking moment with them. While some people may find this style of living claustrophobic, I absolutely love it.

We’re together so much that I basically consider them my family away from Melbourne, with everyone else on the team/at the centre acting as our extended family. I’m someone who loves this set up and the relationships this sport affords me. I wouldn’t change it for the world and can’t express how happy it makes me to know I have such incredibly close friends that get to spend every day with.

So heading back to Melbourne to a house that’s empty most of the time with family at work or uni is a bit of an unusual shift. Alone time can be beneficial and a chance to reset and reflect, but I’ve now grown accustomed to existing around people nearly 24/7. In Penrith I’m rarely ever separated from those I consider my family there.

They’re the people I feel the most like myself around and who I’ve grown so much with over the last few years. I adore getting to come home and see my parents and younger brother, but the dynamic of being here for a more extended period like a holiday break (rather than simply a quick 48 hour visit) leaves me longing for the comfort and ease of being back in a home with my friends who I am now more used to being around than my own family.

I think being with them brings me more comfort than being alone ever will, so it feels a bit counterintuitive being away from them during a period thats meant to make me feel better.

Growing up

Potentially the most intangible factor but one that may have the most underlying impact on this predicament I/others am in is the fact that we have all grown up. Some of us a little, some of us a lot, but it is inevitable when you put yourself into a new environment with new stimulus to manage, you’re going to adapt and change as a person.

Trying to reconcile a newer version of you in a space that a different version of you existed is a challenging process and can leave you very out of sorts. I’ve been taught to practice defining personal growth in a non-judgmental manner, meaning not classify it explicitly as positive or negative, rather simply as change that has occurred to how you operate as an individual based on your circumstances and experiences at any given time. Our bodies and brains will all always try to handle ourselves to the best of their ability, and we should try and limit any criticism of this as a result.

Critique the situation, not your response (noting analysing your response and critiquing it are also different).

Putting yourself in an environment such as a National Training Centre and through experiences such as World Championship campaigns inevitably forces you to under go personal change and “grow up” a bit during the process.

Going back to an environment you existed in before this growth occurred can mean the people and practices you used to engage with or in haven’t adapted in the same way you have, creating the potential for abrasive encounters. You, your thoughts and your behaviours may not gel with the environment and the people here the way they used to.

The differences can be so subtle you don’t even realise they exist until you’re in a situation where you’re just not fitting in, and this can be a painful realisation.

Specifically for me?

I’ve been around “character building” environments and situations now for a few years as apart of the NTC/Rowing Aus team. Some of these have been really positive stimuli causing personal growth, and others not so much. Either way my ability to adapted and respond to them has shifted and changed, along with my preferred behaviours and thought patterns to manage myself through them.

So coming back to an environment different to those I’ve learnt to cope better in has been a struggle. While I’ve grown to handle more and become more stable in myself, this growth hasn’t occurred while I’ve been in Melbourne, and it’s been difficult to reconcile this growth in a different environment.

What am I supposed to do now?

The thorn in your side

At the start of this article I spoke about how all this can be described a dull pain or friction. A bit like a thorn in your side.

A key understanding of this classic idiom is that it can be difficult to remove said thorn, and one must learn to just deal with it. A thorn in your side is not a terminal, just a constance source of trouble or irritation. And my existence back in Melbourne this last week or so has felt like exisiting with a thorn in my side.

I don’t quite feel like I exist comfortably here anymore.

But this is simply a thorn in my side. Being here for more than 48 hours won’t kill me. It may be uncomfortable, it may have lead to some minor mental breakdowns and it may caused some tears.

But being able to exist here even if its uncomfortable affords me the ability to spend time with my family, to see my school friends, to catch up with old work colleagues, to enjoy time at my home rowing sheds, to revisit the amazing girls I’ve been able to coach, and catch up on the lives of everyone who I miss when I’m away.

So while it has caused its fair share of trouble, it has also definitely brought positives. Deep down I think we always know the trip home will have some difficulties, but we choose to do it anyway.

I think what has made this particular trip different is because of just how positive the space and life away from Melbourne has been. I’m so incredibly privileged that returning home has been made harder because I have someplace else and other people so amazing to compare it to. Others may feel this to varying extents and resonate more strongly with different factors that they can draw the deepest comparisons. Again an immensely privileged challenge have, but a challenge nonetheless.

Going home

Writing this article over the last day or so has been very beneficial in helping me wrap my head around the mixed feelings this trip home has brought, as well as helping me decide what the appropriate course of action should be to help navigate the rest of it.

I have to head back to Penrith at some point during the next week to be ready to start our next season of training before the end of October. I had originally intended to spend the full amount of our break period here in Melbourne, before travelling back to Penrith on the last Sunday before we start training.

But at this stage I think I’m going to head back to my new home a bit earlier than I originally planned. This break period has felt like a constant balancing act, perpetually giving and taking. However I think the more I reflect on it, the more I think I’m at a point where I I don’t feel like I have the desire or capacity to balance it much longer.

I’ve still got some planned catch ups and events I’m so excited to enjoy and days to spend with family and friends. However I feel soon I’ll have gained all the possible incredible benefits of getting to see everyone, but if continued will tip over into a zone where the discomfort of being here depletes me more than the benefits can outweigh it.

I’ve loved elements of being back home but it has also left me feeling incredibly exhausted. And with a new season looming on the horizon and big goals for our team to achieve, I don’t want to be getting to the starting blocks already feeling spent.

So heading back a bit earlier than expected is feeling like an idea that may be of help. I think a past version of me would have never even considered this and thought I was ludicrous for not extending every minute possible in Melbourne. But I think that’s because it’s what I thought I should do, not because I actually need to.

It’s always the expectation, and to some extent pressure, to head back to your home state in the break period and squeeze out every last inch of time there to restore your connection to it.

But I realise now that doing this doesn’t necessarily serve me in the same way it used to.

And its because I’ve been so incredibly fortune to grow and develop as a person and have the opportunity to get to start building part of a life that exists away from Melbourne, that I have somewhere else that can help bring me the revitalisation, rest and recovery this break period is supposed to.

Hence rather than forcing myself to stay and grow resentful of the discomfort Melbourne is bringing me, I want to be able to appreciate all it has given me over this period, before heading back to the place that for the time being is now my default comfort zone instead. I may still change my mind and stay the full time in Melbourne, but I’m removing the expectations and pressures of “what if I don’t?”.

Melbourne will always be here and I know I’ll be back again.

Hopefully next time with a better perspective on how to manage coexisting with its joys and discomforts.

Enter one of the most hotly anticipated and equally feared periods of time on our entire Australian Rowing Team calendar:

The Post-Worlds Break. The Aftermath.

The offical culmination of 12 months of blood, sweat, stress, lactic production, blue green algae exposure and tears. A painstakingly small window of time we all collectively crave for throughout the season, and simultaneously one many of us fear with an intensity so strong you’d think we’re about to go home and visit the boogieman.

It’s a weird period that leaves you with a textbook definition of mixed feelings. I think what makes it so difficult to grapple with mentally is the conflicting idea of needing to “wind down” and “relax” after the season, while also being stuck with the luxury of near endless time to ruminate on what was and what will be.

Wired differently

To exist in a sport like rowing I’m of the belief you have to be wired a bit peculiarly to cope with its demands. It’s what makes us addicted to this at-times mind numbingly monotonous pursuit of going as fast as we possibly can year after year. It can also intensify the difficulty to switch off when presented the opportunity to do so.

Part of the reason any of us have been able to excel in this sport is our ability to be relentless in our pursuit of excellence. Always looking to do more, do it better, do it now. You don’t end up with an Olympic medal by sitting around, so the idea of doing just this can cause an almost visceral reaction. Taking a break can feel unnatural, verging on impossible for some.

Not only does time off present the opportunity to rest the body but also the mind. To not be existing in the near constant state of building stress and anticipation for the next big event; whether that’s nationals, trials, World Cups, World Championships or eventually the Olympics. This momentum towards an event with a fixed deadline forces you to be working against the clock and always looking to maximise your time. Time to improve, time to be better, time to go fast. I would say most of us are thinking about rowing a solid 65-75% of the time as a result, even when we don’t want to be.

It seeps its way into our dinner table conversations, drips into our phone calls to family and oozes out in text messages to friends. It’s a weird phenomenon anyone committed to pursuing a large goal experiences to some extent.

It forces its way into such a large chunk of your mental capacity it can’t help but spill out into other areas of your life sometimes. Thus when you enter The Aftermath and suddenly inherit a hearty chunk of mental space away from training and competing, it can feel like you don’t know what to do with it. The thoughts of rowing are still there, but you’ve suddenly paused your largest outlet for it.

This can all leave you feeling like you’re wadding through a mental sludge of thoughts, feelings and emotions about the past season/season to come and no clear path to clean it out with.

Not to mention for many of us the sport is just another outlet or means of managing other pieces life causing mental friction, so sending us home from training for a period certainly doesn’t always help managing that either.

And thus while it is always nice to have some time to go holiday, head home and spend much needed time with family and friends, it can also leave a bit too much time free to feel like you’re going insane (at least for some of us).

Opportunities

I’m lucky enough to be writing this article poolside in a villa in Thailand I’m sharing with some of my friends - a very ideal set up for a post racing holiday.

Part of me writing it is definitely a forced attempt to try and articulate to myself the dark cloud I feel looming over myself and I know other fellow athletes as we venture deeper into this period of Aftermath.

I’m notoriously bad at dealing with emotions/feelings/anything deep down inside so it makes sense being granted the mental capacity and time to do so is slightly terrifying.

But this year for '“The Aftermath” rather than subconsciously rejecting it with every fibre of my being, I’m trying to let myself for better or for worse be engulfed by it. Well and truly embrace the slow pace, the free time and opportunity to be stuck with my own thoughts.

While this prospect has not always been my first preference, the longer I’ve got to know my own brain and learn from those around me who are far wiser, apparently …

Periods of rest can be useful?!!

Slowing down every now and again is healthy!?!

Learning to feel okay in your own company is important?!?

Time to sit with emotions can be helpful?!

Who would have thought!?!

So as uncomfortable as it can be, I’m determined to exit this period feeling well rested, like I’ve dealt with the inevitable mental demons of the last season and that The Aftermath doesn’t leave me feeling anymore scarred than I entered it.

Gardens

The 2023 Aftermath was a blur smeared so much by mental instability that I think it’s been erased in its near entirety from my memory.

The 2024 Aftermath was characterised by highs and low so drastic in their spread I was practically teleporting between the two.

I’m determined to make the 2025 Aftermath as a whole a more enjoyable and useful experience.

Something to nurture. Something to grow from.

They say your mind is a garden and I want to use this period to tend to mine. Not feel like I’m tearing it back down to its roots yet again.

The Aftermath is a timeframe not unique to the sport of rowing, nor sport in general. The window of time following any big event is often one of turbulence. So I hope if this article resonates with anyone they can know they’re not alone in these feelings of uncertainty and avoidance. I certainly don’t have the answers yet as to how to deal with it yet but I’m hoping the next few weeks will prove as good learnings (some I can share back with you all!)

Hopefully I’ll use the time to also churn out a few articles (including a full debrief of Worlds 2025 for those of you who are rowing fans) so be sure to subscribe if you’re interested :)

Not only are you scrapping through the most intense weeks of training of the season, but you’re also battling a never ending to-list of things to prepare and organise before you head overseas. From catching up with friends to say goodbye, organising uni work for when you’re away, cleaning up your house, packing your bags, getting travel documents organised, all on top of a full training schedule, there really is what feels like an endless amount of work to do.

At times it can feel like you’re a nightmarish state of being completely stuck in a sludge of training, fatigue and to-dos, while the days till departure comes barrelling towards you at a million miles an hour. You’re bracing for impact the entire time, waiting for that all important moment of contact and the painful anticipation of collision to be over.

Although I’ve gone through these pre-departure periods twice before (once for Worlds in 2023, and the Olympics in 2024), they still haven’t seemed to get any easier.

The training slog

It makes sense that the months leading into the biggest competition of the year are the hardest ones training wise. Pushing 200+km weeks on the water, lots of work in the gym, cross training sprinkled in and balancing the rest of life in-between. This training slog also comes with the joys of changing seasons, shifting from the heat of Europe straight back to a Penrith winter. The mornings barely ever touch close to 10 degrees and you spend each session wearing so many layers you start to feel claustrophobic by the end.

It’s definitely a test of character to push through these middle months of the year but it’s in these long, cold weeks where a lot of the “belief bank” is built.

The harder the session, and the higher mental and physical fortitude required to overcome it, the larger the deposit into the belief bank. Every time we were able to push out some insanely hard sessions (Ladder of Death, Awesome Foursome, GutBuster to name a few) with some good speeds and good technical developments, it felt like we were moving closer and closer to achieving a solid performance come racing in Shanghai.

Of course this training block wasn’t without its hiccups. Injury, illness, changing seating, selection processes, changing coaches and adverse weather all lead to each and every session having a new changing variable to navigate. One thing for certain is that the few months back at home have tested and improved our ability to remain adaptable.

Fear of the unknown

While we we’ve been chipping away in Penrith for the last few months there has also been a looming cloud of the unknown. You have no idea how fast anyone else in the world is going, no idea who you’ll be racing, and no idea really if the training you’re currently doing will be enough to produce results. It’s a weird feeling to have linger around, attempting to have total blind faith in what you’re doing and trusting the process, but really having no idea if it will be enough.

It’s always a tricky mental obstacle to conquer; trying to create an unshakable belief in your ability to achieve (whatever that may be for any given race or season). I am a huge believer that having belief really is half the battle and without it you’re fighting a lost cause. It’s what keeps you going when things get tough and what gives you that extra bit of courage when it really counts. And while it can be difficult to create (especially when you’re in an situation where you don’t have the instantaneous feedback that what you’re doing is working), the feeling of having it is unmatched.

It’s like achieving a mental clarity you didn’t know existed. Everything else come racing just seems to get that little bit quieter and that pit in your stomach suddenly doesn’t seem so deep.

This year as the first of an Olympiad has brought a lot more unknowns then I ever anticipated and trying to get in the right headspace to manage that has been a challenge. I’ve only ever raced at an Olympic Qualification year, and then the Olympics. Both regattas that have years of preparation (and expectations) built into them, and now we’re back to the start of this preparation phase. Looking to build the foundations of our team for the next 4 years. It’s a different feeling, and a different approach to racing and its preparation is needed than what I’ve experienced before.

We’re incredibly lucky for the amazing group of coaches we have around us to help navigate this process. Along with being able to lean on others who have dealt with this before; the shift of coming from the peak of an Olympic Games and all its build up, back to the starting point of a cycle again.

While it’s been a very different process and I’m still working on the different mentality it requires, this has given so much opportunity for growth and learnings that I’m sure will be invaluable for seasons to come.

#916

So slowly but surely the weeks and months ticked over from jumping off the plane from Europe and getting on the plane to Shanghai. And before we knew it the final week of preparation had rolled around. The mens and para team joined us in Penrith for the week, with a fun max 2km race at the end to make sure the tank was well and truly empty before getting on the plane to Shanghai. The final week before departure is also always filled with the added stressor/enjoyment of media days and presentations.

Getting your World Champs racing zootie is always a special feeling, and getting to share the moment with your teammates and friends really is the icing on the cake. This year mine is also printed with my McVilly Pearce number - 916. Receiving this was a very cool moment of reflection; thinking back to Hayley who raced her first Worlds in 2023 and was yet to receive her number, through to me now who gets to have her first race wearing that number beneath the Australian Coat of Arms.

Balance and belief

While this period is always stressful to deal with, something the last few years have taught me is that when departure day inevitably comes, no matter how disorganised and disorientated you may feel before it, you will get on the plane in one piece.

You will managed to have all your bags packed. House tidy. Training completed. Ready to go. Every time without fail.

By nature of what we do it’s simply not an option to not follow through with these things, and we have all built enough evidence through our own experiences that we will get them done.

This is something I’ve tried really hard to lean into over the past few months; using evidence of my own experiences as proof of my capabilities.

I trust myself to get things done, because I always have.

I trust myself to get through hard periods, because I always have.

I trust myself to get me to departure date to the absolute best of my ability, because I always have.

I have no reason for these truths to have changed, so I simply trust myself to ensure they happen again.

And part of this is leaning into the ability to better balance myself and my stress levels. Not feeling afraid of embracing activities that although may feel daunting to my Type A brain who wants to cleanest path to getting things done. Knowing that sometimes giving myself space to destress and let off steam will actually help me be more efficient in future.

One of my fav podcasts has an episode talking more about this idea of “Efficiency vs Effectiveness” and the power of this distinction.

So while these months pre-departure (and particularly the last few weeks) have been insanely busy and stressful, they have also been sprinkled in with moments and areas of trying to create balance and space to breathe.

Weekend trips to Sydney. Surprise birthday brunches. Themed parties. Hen’s Weekends away. Visits from family. Walks in the Blue Mountains. Trips to cafes. Lots of runs. TV nights with friends.

Any and all activities that have been able to help fill the cup back up emotionally and leave me feeling mentally refreshed (even if for only short stints). The last few nights at my house before we left may have been spent with our bedroom floors in shambles and living in out of bags as we commuted to and from home/SIRC/NTC/Astina/Panthers, but we made it through in one piece. We successfully survived the storm that is the time pre-departure, and now we just have to trust and enjoy the next few weeks to come.

Final stop

So as I’m writing this we’ve officially made it to Shanghai - the final stop of this year’s international campaign.

The stage is set for the World Rowing Championships and we’re well and truly locked in to give it our best shot.

I’ll do my best to get an article out at some point while we’re here giving a rundown on Shanghai is like. One of the perks of finally getting to the end of the season is the taper (aka more free time than you know what to do with). And we’re staying in a pretty remote location so days spent in the hotel room blasting the AC are set to be veryyy frequent.

If you want to watch our journey to racing be sure to follow @rowingaustralia and @rowsellas on Instagram for the latest updates. I’m very excited for what’s to come over the next few weeks and see what we can do in this first major stepping stone of the LA Olympiad :)

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This is a slightly different article to my normal content but I was inspired by an image I saw on my instagram explore page the other evening.

Coincidently I remember stumbling upon a very similar (or potentially even the same) text-post a number of years ago when I wasn’t in a very good place. I had a screenshot saved on my phone, as a weird sort of hopefully reminder to myself that maybe this random person on the internet was right, and maybe one day things would get better.

And when I saw it again the other evening I had this moment of realisation that they were right. Things had gotten better.

So I just wanted to take another moment to share some pieces of gratitude and pieces of hope, because hearing someone else share those glimpses of feeling better had given me hope that maybe one day I would too.

I’m so incredibly lucky to live a life now that 15 year old me would never have even dreamed was possible, or 17 year old me, or even 20 year old me. I have been extremely fortunate that even in the periods of my life where I have faced challenge or hardship, I have had so much love and support around me. But my aim with these articles is to share insight into my own experiences in the hope that others may be able to relate. So while my struggles are by no means the worst out there and I am incredibly privileged to live the life I have, they were still my struggles and things that I had to overcome to eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am okay. Everything’s okay. You’re going to be okay.

These are words that I have had echo through my head whenever I find myself in an aggressive downward spiral. For some reason the repetitive nature of hearing these words over and over and over always helped soothe me amidst moments of sheer panic, terror and overwhelm. Over and over again, trying to trick myself into a state of calm, using the hope one day things would be better and “okay” as motivation to keep battling with a brain that felt like it was untameable. I have pages and pages and pages of these words scribbled out in the back of journals or notebooks when saying them in my head or out-loud wasn’t enough to bring me back to my present self.

I remember when I was going through patches where I was really struggling with my mental health I had a nagging voice in the back of my head saying that there was no point fighting because I wouldn’t never “get better”. I would never actually truly feel “okay” or safe in my own mind like I used to. My brain was my brain, my thoughts were my thoughts and that was never going to change. I couldn’t control it, I couldn’t mediate it and no matter what I did I would always succumb to feeling engulfed in my anxiety and negative thoughts.

But eventually these moments would pass. They always did. And slowly I would feel okay again.

It may have taken years and countless hours upon hours in psychologist and specialist appointments. Some done at 4am in foreign countries. Some done crammed between sessions at work or training. Some done during the hardest weeks of a racing campaign. Some done days before an Olympic or World Championship finals. And in between there’s been countless hours practicing. Writing. Thinking. Talking. Rewiring my brain and the way it functions. A painstakingly slow process to try and stop it from feeling like it was attacking every fibre of my being on certain days.

But at some point these moments of fear became less frequent. Less all-consuming. And the panic that I would never be the same “okay” as I used to be quietly crept away. The thoughts were still there, the panic still underlying, but I was learning bit by bit how to simply coexist with them.

And the hope of things getting better, that I would be okay, actually eventuated.

It was because I kept having that glimmer of hope, even when sometimes I truly didn’t know why anymore, that I get to experience a life now that makes me want to live so incredibly much.

Worth being hopeful for

I get to spend every day doing what I love with the most amazing group people.

I am an Olympic finalist and a World Championship medalist.

I live in an amazing house with some of my best friends.

I’ve been able to travel the world.

I get to make younger self proud.

I have the most incredible group of friends all across Australia.

I am healthier both physically and mentally.

I’ve had opportunities to coach wonderful groups younger athletes.

I get to help others.

I am surrounded by people I love and who support me.

I have started to make peace with my past and who I am today.

I truly didn’t think that having all this was ever possible and every day I am so incredibly grateful for it. And equally every day I am thankful for all the hard patches I went through, because without them I wouldn’t be able to appreciate all that I have now. I still have moments of struggle, no ones life is ever perfect, but I’ve built enough evidence for myself now to truly belief I can do hard things and I can handle whatever life throws at me. I remember my psychologist used to tell me that everything I’ve gotten through is proof of that. Although, I don’t think I ever really believed it, I didn’t feel I was actually getting through things in one piece. Kinda more like I was just stumbling my way through life and accumulating more and more mental or physical damage along the way. But now I see she was right. Although they were hard to get through, the knowledge I came out the other side is priceless.

Time machines

I’d love to be able to go back in time and reassure earlier versions of me that the advice things do get better really is true, and that despite how suffocating her brain and life can feel at times, one day she will feel like she’s able to breathe properly again.

I want to hug her so closely and warmly all her fears feel like they melt away. I want to wipe away her pooling tears and bandage up her hidden wounds. I want to tell her she is loved, she is a good person and she will be get through this. That she does make it out the other side and she is not alone.

I don’t now whether she would believe me but I hope where I am now is enough proof to at least give her a little more hope.

Sadly Time Machines don’t exist. And I can’t quite provide reassurance to that version of me who was so desperately struggling, but hopefully these words can be reassurance to someone else.

Life really does get better. It may not feel like it now but I promise things do get better. You will be okay. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but one day. It really does get better :)

If you or anyone else you know is struggling with mental health issues, there is always help available. Speak to someone you feel comfortable sharing with or reach out to professional support.

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The bucket

A few years ago I was introduced by a psychologist to this analogy of “the bucket”.

Imagine your life as a bucket with a spout at the side. This bucket must hold every and all elements of your life, from the day to day mundane tasks through to your largest and wildest aspirations. Everything taking some degree of your mental and physical capacity must be poured into your bucket, filling it to whatever level necessary.

This includes large elements of your life such as uni, school, sport, relationships, finances or health, through to smaller items such as chores, appointments, socialising with friends or family commitments, which although don’t always seem pressing are ultimately takes which do require some degree of mental capacity and time.

Most people don’t enjoy having a bucket too empty; your life feels bleak and bored, often without a sense of purpose - a little stress is always good. On the other end of the spectrum, a bucket that is too full, or even to the point of overflowing, is also not a desirable state to be in. This is when you’re at capacity, your body or mind (sometimes both) can no longer keep up with the demands you’re pouring into it, and rather than being able to manage and maintain, it simply overflows. Overflowing, out pouring, the unravelling of your life is something you can’t control and something which won’t stop until such time that your bucket is back to below overfull levels.

However when shifting between these varying extremes you have “the spout”. The perfectly constructed tap designed to let out some of the various items taking up precious amounts of your capacity. This spout can be turned on with any and all activities which can help manage the stressors in your life. Maybe it’s seeing friends, baking, going for a walk, doing the laundry, a nap. It can be anything that you feel helps keep the bucket from teetering towards the overflow point.

Helpful vs unhelpful

Sometimes these “spout-turners” or “tap” aren’t always so helpful. Unhelpful coping strategies are also means of helping mange your capacity. “Unhelpful” refers to their longterm ramifications, generally on your health (whether physical or mental) or relationships (with yourself and/or others), however “coping strategies” is still in the name because ultimately they do help assist in coping with reaching that overflow point. For me unhelpful strategies have manifested in the form of disordered eating, self harming, excessive disassociation or a multitude of other behaviours. Unhelpful in the long term? Definitely. But they were what helped me cope in those moments? Absolutely. And something my amazing psych also has helped me grapple with is the ability to acknowledge that while there are helpful and unhelpful coping strategies we can rely on, there is not such thing as inherently “good” or “bad” ones - if they help you cope, they help you cope. Villainising them does nothing but create shame and self-resentment, two characteristics which can only further contribute to the contents of one’s bucket. They may come back and re-add to your bucket in future (#unhelpful), but in the short-term they can assist in alleviating building pressures and sometimes that is what is needed in the moment to get you through until such time that you can learn to use other, healthier strategies.

Overflow

This analogy and more specifically the overflowing end of its spectrum has been something I’ve toyed with since the moment it was explained to me. By the nature of my position in high performance sport, (in conjunction with being a uni student, working, living out of home, wanting to stay connected with friends, having hobbies, dealing with health predicaments and needing to stay fit) my bucket is generally always existing close to capacity.

And for a long time I had no idea how to cope when it got to the point of overflow. I could acknowledge I was at the point of starting to spill over the edges, but felt completely helpless to cope with what felt like the million-and-one demands on my time and energy. Sometimes it was my body giving way first (usually in the form of another round of debilitating chest/lung infections) and other times it was my mind, as I would fall into a state of complete unravel.

I went through periods of existing in a constant cycle of teetering near overflow, using unhelpful coping strategies to try and claw it back under control, only for this short term solution to lead me right back to the point of being at capacity again. The longer I worked with trying to understand my bucket, and the spout that was attached to it, the better I got at understanding this pattern. However while I managed to understand this pattern relatively quickly, being able to get yourself out of it is significantly harder.

Existing at capacity

I would say only within the last 6 months have I started to feel like I’ve finally been able to start managing my bucket’s capacity more consistently, and feel like I’m more under control with it.

Knowing what elements are contributing to capacity, and knowing how I can alleviate some of these stressors are the two key points to this. I’ve gotten better at understanding when certain contributors are likely to start increasing, and how this increased contribution may look (eg knowing when I’ve inevitably got a mid-semster fortnightly period with uni assignments, or the weeks before we depart overseas of competition). And through years of practice I’ve become better at using helpful strategies to help empty my bucket a bit when needed.

Consistency for me is a core practice in helping manage my capacity. Staying consistent in my time management, my routines, my fitness, my socialising, is one way I know I can keep my bucket under control. Creating space for hobbies, removing shame from needing to rest, knowing what forms of socialising help calm me are all strategies I’ve used.

One of the hard things when figuring out how to manage your bucket is understanding that sometimes things can both contribute to your bucket, and simultaneously help empty it. Take seeing friends as an example:

Although this takes time and energy, and can sometimes feel like an added stressor when you’re feeling under the pump, it’s like a short term investment that will inevitably pay off if you're feeling more relaxed and calm afterwards. And this relaxation and calm can usually help you actually better manage the other more pressing stressors in your life.

I’ve been extremely lucky within the last few months of my life to have had a bucket I’ve been able to better manage. Some of my past stressor have been removed, and I’ve gained newer, more helpful means of alleviating some of my current stressors.

But no one’s bucket management is perfect. And overflow at times is always inevitable.

And I think I’m just about at that point again.

I’ve been existing with a bucket so criminally close to spillage for the last few weeks it feels like the first drops over the edge are bound to fall soon.

Between studying for and organising university exams, some ridiculously intense weeks of training, planning overseas trips, the approaching depurate to World Championships, managing household/adult life, keeping on top of exercising and needing some much needed sleep, I’ve been struggling to keep from overflowing my capacity. I’ve been trying my very best to mitigate this with every and all coping strategies I posses. This weekend I spent some much needed time away from Penrith with friends out in Sydney by the beach, enjoying sunshine, coffee and time with some doggos - the perfect way to relax and recharge.

Despite this lovely weekend, filled with some time that definitely did help empty some of my bucket, I still found myself hyperventilating and in an absolute mess mentally before I’d even started running tonight - telltale signs I’m starting to not cope. Sometimes you simply cannot empty the bucket faster than it’s being filled.

Being okay with overflow

Through learning more about my bucket and how to manage it and myself, I’ve been able to come to a place where I’m okay with this. I’m okay with knowing it may overflow. For the first time in years I’ve been able to exist at this high volume capacity for an extended period without turning to unhelpful strategies to start emptying its contents, or cycling through overflow and refill at a near daily pace.

When I had my near mini meltdown running this evening it caught me slightly by surprise. Running on a treadmill is one of my favourite destressors. Letting yourself disassociate for 45 minutes to a BoilerRoom set is one of my fav forms of self care and it’s always slightly disappointing when these things don’t work the way you expect. However through better knowing my bucket and how my turbulent relationship with exercise impacts it at different times, I knew for me tonight that getting a humble 6km run done was something manageable that wouldn’t quite tip me over the edge mentally (definitely felt close though), but would be helpful for me tomorrow or the day after in continuing to manage my capacity.

So when I came home still on the verge of tears, I wrote a list of what I needed to do, tackled some of my swirling head noise by getting this article out in writing, and have set about trying to manage my bucket again.

I know this lengthy analysis may seem like an overthink (and it probably/definitely is knowing me) but my reality is that if I don’t actively engage with it, I know that’s when unhelpful strategies start creeping in and my ability to actually keep my life feeling manageable start to slip away.

Another day

As I wrap this up, I think I’m feeling better than I was 60 minutes ago, which is a welcomed feeling. However I know I’m still very much at that potential tipping point. And I know I’ll continue to be, realistically for the next probably month as we head into World Championships. That thought can be scary, and there’s always the lingering questions in the back of my head of what if I resort of old methods of trying to manage the weight of my bucket, and the fear of what will happen if I do end up at that point of overflow again soon. However I’ve experienced managing my capacity enough now and have enough intrinsic evidence to know I will be okay either way, and I trust myself to make it out the other side in one piece and able to bounce back regardless.

I encourage everyone to spend some time getting to know their bucket; both what elements of your life are filling it up (for better and for worse), and how your spout is helping to manage it’s levels. Knowledge of these areas can help you use and manage your capacity more wisely, as well as exist close to capacity when needed. It doesn’t always feel sustainable but if I’ve learnt anything from the incredible people in my life who have been able to achieve so much, it’s that it is possible.

I’m going to conclude this extremely unpolished article here (which surprisingly has been written in record time for me) and get back to the exam revision which is absolutely screaming my name. And when I’ve done all that my brain can handle for this evening, I’ll prepare for tomorrow and another day of attempting to exist close to this point of capacity, but knowing I’ll be okay if things do happen to start spilling over the edge anyway.

I also started writing this around the same time I published my article “Finding gratitude in defeat”. A huge thank you to everyone who read, messaged, called, emailed, commented and replied to it.

Read here if you haven't already :)

I had no idea it would reach as many people as it did and I’m so incredibly grateful it could be of use. Something I’ve learnt over the last few years is that you will rarely have a truely unique experience, so if you can be willing to talk about something there will nearly always be someone else out there who can relate and help you through it too.

This article provides some coverage of the last two stops on our Euro Racing Summer trip where we raced in Lucerne for World Cup II and Henley-on-Thames for Henley Royal Regatta. Both these regattas were very different in their set up/style of racing/how they run, even the crew combination we raced in. What they both had in common was the absolute wave of chaos they brought down on the Australian Women’s 8.

These last 2 weeks have been absolutely mental, both in good and not so good ways. They’ve been true tests of our team’s resilience, cooperation, adaptability and how well we can remain passive when required.

Learning when to be passive is something that I’ve had hammered into me since joining the national team back in 2023. Whether from fellow senior athletes or our coaches, the ability to “accept or allow what happens or what others do, without active response or resistance” has something that has unsuspectingly become one of the most vital tools I’ve learnt to utilise.

When you start racing and training internationally a lot of new additional variables start to come into play for the game of rowing. Whether it’s boats being transported across country borders, travel days spanning over 24hrs or living out of a suitcase for months at a time, you need to get good at being adaptable

Lucerne WC2

Another World Cup done and dusted and another Bronze medal for the AUS W8+! Was fantastic to finish up the regatta on the podium after what was a turbulent week spent in Lucerne. Between illness, injury, adverse weather and broken equipment, our “hospital boat” (nickname courtesy of our coach) tested our ability to remain as passive as possible in many different situations.

Battling the conditions

Day 1 and 2 in Switzerland of boat set up and training brought some stunning weather! Lucerene is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever visited with rowing and safe to say I was beyond ectatic to be going back. The racing here is always incredible and paired with its amazing views you can’t ask for much more than a week on the Rotsee.

However, by Day 3 things had taken a turn and the sunshine we had enjoyed in our first few days had switched to storms reminiscent of the Lucerne Regatta of 2024 which was well and truly rained out.

By Thursday afternoon it was absolutely bucketing outside. We’ve spent nearly the entirety of the day bunkered in our rooms while thunder and rain has battered the city and subsequently the Rotsee. We had done some hot laps in the morning to try and beat the storms, with the intention to speed back down to the course for a 2nd row in the afternoon with a slim 1hr window where the rain was meant to stop.

Except then the rain didn’t stop. It actually turned into a full blown storm. And the regatta centre closed. So no training was allowed at all. For the rest of the day.

So stranded in the hotel we were. One of the realities of being an elite athlete on tour is travelling to amazing foreign cities, but spending most of your time in a hotel room trying to rest up before racing. Add in inclement weather and it becomes more like 99% of your time away from the course.

While we were all frustrated to find ourself literally stuck in this situation, we once again repeated the mantra to “stay passive” and decided there was nothing a few episodes of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and games of Bananagrams couldn’t fix.

Managing injuries and surprise debuts

The real test of our crew’s mental fortitude came in the form of a line up that changed not once. Not twice. but FOUR times over the course of the regatta.

Unfortunately within the first few days of us being in Lucerne we had a crew member go down with an injury. Double unfortunately for us at this point in our European campaign we had no spares. No available substitutions. No sweepers able to race who weren’t already lining up for their own events across the weekend.

But luckily for us we did have our amazing single sculler - who ended up jumping in to be our 2 seat. This quick change of crew members occurred hours before our preliminary race. We left our hotel not knowing who would be the 8th member of our crew at the start line.

By this point it was almost laughable the amount of changes our crews plan had gone through. But alas we remained passive and continue to put one foot in front of the other to head down to the regatta centre and get our preliminary race out of the way. A good hit out with our newly formed crew and we managed to come away with 3rd - a strong position to take us into the final on Sunday.

However the next few days continued to test the crew ability to “accept what happens without response” as we sadly had another crew member requiring a medical withdrawal. Once again - we still had no spares (and had already claimed our super sub sculler to sit in our 2 seat). So 18hrs before our A-Final we made the call to have someone double-up into the 8. Another super sub, but a situation meaning we weren’t going to row our racing line up until the final. We would be racing for a World Cup Medal as our first row together.

No pressure.

Lucky for us even under the intensity of racing, bad weather, injuries, illness and training hiccups, we were able to get the job done and come away with a medal.

It might have been one of the closest international races I’ve ever done with 0.08 seconds separating 3rd and 4th, but I think the slim margin is what made getting through the week as a success more satisfying.

Shoutout to our amazing 5 crew members who won their first ever World Cup sweep medal too! Super exciting for the future of women’s sweeping in Australia, I’m so proud to get to work with such an amazingly talented group of gals!!

Celebrations

After the race our coach gave me a hug that really caught me off guard. Off guard because it felt so genuine, so caring and full of pride. He was so so incredibly excited for us and what we had been able to achieve despite a week full of adversity. It made me nearly start tearing up in the middle of the boat park (although that could have just been from exhaustion after staying in a room with no AC all week). It was one of those moments that make you really appreciate why you do this job. Why we put up with all the stressors and drama that come with being in a high performance environment.

I said in my last training diaries article that “Winning a medal [in Lucerne] is something very difficult to achieve and I look forward to embracing the challenge with our newly formed crew.”

We may have gotten more than we bargained for in the “challenge” category but I think its made us all even prouder of what we managed to achieve.

One of the best parts of regattas is always the evening after finals racing. You have a small window of 12hrs to just relax and celebrate with your teammates, as well as others who raced. This year we ended up with a congregation of Australians, Kiwis, Americans and Canadians amongst other nations gathered in a small Irish pub in the heart of Lucerne. It was so much fun to see some of our international friends, as well as enjoy the company of our own team with the pressure of racing melting away behind us. Many other countries weren’t heading to Henley it felt a bit like a farewell dinner, knowing the next time we would all be together again would be in a few months time at the World Championships in Shanghai. A perfect evening to cap off a chaotic but enjoyable week in one of the best places in the world to enjoy rowing.

Henley Royal Regatta

Off the back of our racing in Lucerne, the Monday morning we were straight to the airport and inbound for the famous Henley Royal Regatta. Arguably the most notable event on the international racing calendar, Henley is the pinnacle of rowing to many. With its enormous crowds, incredible set up, match-racing format and brutal progression system, Henley is always a spectacle.

Delays

However for us getting on the race track for this event was slightly more delayed than we had hoped. Our racing was scheduled to begin on Saturday with a match up against the GB W8+. No worries, a good few days to prepare and get used to the chaotic Henley water ways.

Except when we arrived in Henley on Monday we had a slight issue - our boat wasn’t here yet. Currently MIA somewhere in the European continent, we spent Monday afternoon napping in a paddock while we waited in hope that our boat would eventually turn up. Our 1pm boat arrival turned to 3pm, which turned into 5pm, which turned into hopefully the next morning.

So Tuesday rolled around (after a sleepless night in our house with the 9 of us crammed into 3 airconless rooms in the middle of the GB heatwave) and we went to have another crack at setting up the boat, which thankfully had arrived over night. However we encountered another slight issues - our riggers weren’t here.

The next 5 hours were spent in a haze of running around the boat park trying to figure out if anyone anywhere had spare riggers we could use, eventually finding said spare riggers, and basically rigging the entire boat from scratch to try and make its funky configuration work for our crew.

Nearly 6 hours later, we were finally done. Our coach and I had managed to get the boat rowable after what felt like an eternity and we were finally ready to hit the track. Super bosh.

Down to work

So off to work we got, finally able to spend the next few days preparing to race. Anyone who has competed at Henley before knows just how chaotic the regatta can get on the water. It is probably the most hectic waterway in the world to train on, with competitors, spectators, officials and media boats all tearing up a relatively narrow river in all directions and 2112m of wooden poles to crash into thrown in as well.

It is proper carnage.

But it’s also part of the fun of Henley and what makes the regatta so exciting. Every training row is something different and crazy. It took us a few days to get back into our groove after not being together as a crew since Varese World Cup a few weeks prior, but once we had a few rows under our belt it felt like we were well and truly ready to go. We were getting used to managing the waterways, the added roll and stream plus changing conditions down the course and planning the tactics of racing. With each trip to and from our little town house down to the famous Henley tents (usually with a stop off to Gails on the way) it felt like we were building momentum towards race day.

Extra noise

While it definitely felt like we were building momentum win our training throughout the week and slowly getting our mojo as a crew back, one of the added challenges of Henley is the sheer amount of external noise and chaos going on around the regatta. Between the Stewards Enclosure, the town of Henley coming alive, heaps of other Australian clubs and athletes there to race and spectate (plus those you know internationally), family members and friends who’ve come travelled to watch, the ruckus of the boat park and party life of everyone who’s done racing, it can be an overwhelming level of distractions at times. Its a slightly bizarre situation to be in as a member of a national team; you’re so used to everything being planned to perfection and every possible element of your regatta set up being optimised (from accom, food, transport, treatment - everything!) to suddenly being thrown into a small British town, at a regatta with thousand of other people, living with your whole crew one house and just absolutely winging it.

While we battled with the conditions on the water, off the water we were battling the constant noise and chaos that engulfed Henley-on-the-Thames. It’s a constant balancing act of trying to enjoy some of the excitement Henley has to offer as it truly is one of the most incredibly unique experiences in rowing, while simultaneously knowing you’re there to do a job.

We spent our time between training sessions exploring the many cafes and supermarkets of the town, parking up alongside the river bank to watch our teammates race, heading out to dinner a few times and catching up with fellow Australians who were there to race (shoutout to the Mercantile W8s & Bronnie and Patto in the 2-!).

Go time

Eventually after what felt like an eternity of waiting, race day had finally come. After a morning pre row and heading back home for final preparations, we were locked in and ready to race.

I gave a recap of the actual race day in my article “Finding gratitude in defeat”, below is some excerpts from it :)

Having been in Henley since Monday but being forced to wait until Saturday to finally get our chance to run down the track, we were like dogs ready to be let off the leash. With rain and wind battering down on Henley we were set for a rough and long race. Despite the roaring headwind and aggressive rain, we were eager to get to the start line. To prove to ourselves and everyone else watching what we could do. Quiet whisperings and echoes of “I’ve got a good feeling about this” and “we can do this I know we can” were passed up and down the boat between the yells of support and excitement through our warm up pieces.

Sat at the start line I remember shaking with what was probably a mix of slighthypothermia from the inclement weather, and nerves towards what was about to unfold.

2112m of what we knew would be nothing short of dog fight.

2112m to make history.

Before we knew it the flag was dropped, and we were away and moving.

Despite the excitement, the anticipation, the hardwork, the preparation, the planning, the gut instinct this would be something special, it wasn’t enough.

It’s the harsh reality of sport. Sometimes your best just isn’t enough.

We parked our boat on the pontoon, gave each other some needed tight hugs, shared our disappointment over the result, but also the pride we had in the race we put together. We debriefed, derigged our boat and began packing away the end of our Henley campaign. Although not the result we had wanted it felt like a massive step in the right direction for our crew. We had executed a race we could be proud of and had closed the gap on one of the best crews in the world since the last time we had raced them in Italy. Not a bad way to end to our international travels.

Closing time

Our departure from Henley was scheduled for the following afternoon, meaning we were able to enjoy one proper evening of the festivities Henley had to offer. We were lucky enough to secure some last minute tickets into Leander Club and got to spend a few hours on the dance floor and enjoying Pimms with friends. It was a great way to end the campaign off, getting to spend time with our entire crew. Despite losing I genuinely couldn’t wipe the smile off my face with how thankful I was to be surrounded by such amazing people in such an amazing place. I won’t be forgetting our Henley trip anytime soon and am already looking forward to the next time we hopefully get to go!!!

All-in-all the last two stops on our European campaign were extremely hectic/chaotic but an absolute blast regardless. If you’re a rowing fan and you ever get the chance, do yourself a favour and go visit Lucerne and Henley. They’re some of the most spectacular places in the world for this sport and never fail to bring an incredible atmosphere and exciting racing.

Now we’re back home in Penrith, adapting to proper winter weather and building towards our next big goal - World Championships in Shanghai, China in September! More to come on how we’re battling the cold weather, flooded river and a few of our precious weekends off soon ;)

Relative energy deficiency, suppressed hormone levels, osteopenia, iron deficiency, hypotension, chronic chest infections, atypical anorexia nervosa, suppressed immune system, low energy availability, amenorrhea, bradycardia, etc. The long list of diagnoses or “you’re on track” flaggings I’ve had in my relatively short existence as an adult is at times amusing.

I say amusing not to be cynical but because of how I’ve come to react to these medical labels. While they may be causes for alarm to the wonderful doctors and practitioners I’ve seen over the years, to me they’ve just become my normal as a coxswain.

Normal as heading to training 6 days a week. Normal as setting off for session 1 of the day before the suns even up. Normal as spending day after day chasing dreams of Olympic medals and World Championship podiums.

The reality of life as an elite athlete is your normal is not normal. You learn quickly your life trajectory and the day to day building blocks around it are inherently different to your peers and acquaintances of similar ages. While my school friends talk about their triumphs scaling the corporate ladder and their university degrees, I share stories of my pursuit trying to make some pieces of carbon go really fast in the water.

Sometimes you begin to question this normal though.

Quietly to yourself in bathrooms or specialist doctors waiting rooms.

When your hair is falling out in the shower.

When you wake up on lying on the cool tiles of your hallway floor after you’ve just passed out.

When you don’t recognise yourself properly when you look in the mirror anymore.

When the doctor says that having children could be an issue later.

Never too loudly and never for too long, but these sorts of moments do make you wonder. Is it all worth it?

I know I’m not alone in asking these questions and they’re few are far between for athletes. The amount of birthdays, weddings, university lectures, parties, holidays, work opportunities, sleep ins and countless other aspects of a standard human life you give up in your pursuit of achieving an excellence so few have the opportunity to come close to is almost unimaginable. Sacrifice is the name of the game.

I like to think however these sacrifices are relatively easy in the scheme of all the ‘hard things’ athletes endure, as they deal with short term trade offs for long term gain. Yes you may miss a Friday night out with friends, but an Olympic medal lasts forever right?

This is where the grey area of long term sacrifices for sport are given space to echo through your mind. What about those tradeoffs that don’t seem so short-term? While you can look to balance a social life or study or work around sport (to some extent) there are certain elements of being an athlete that just won’t budge, no matter how painstakingly long you can ruminate on them. Irreversible impacts on your health and ability to function as a human being are hard to grapple with no matter how long you’ve been in a sport.

I think I would like to have children one day. I quite like the idea of being able to spend hazy Sunday afternoons lounging on deck chairs in the backyard, watching my kids run through a sprinkler, as the smell of Aeroguard and eucalyptus trees linger in the late, dry December air.

Quietly I sometimes wonder if this reality might not be possible for me anymore.

But most of the time that thought feels a bit too scary to tackle. Too big and overwhelming and loud to try and wrestle with everything else already causing my life to feel like it’s bursting at the seams. If an athletes brains already feels at full capacity 99% of the time with the reality of our life training and competing, I don’t quite think mine is ready to handle those added harsh realities either.

So instead I just let them sit. Tucked away, neatly packaged in a box labeled ‘don’t touch until ready’ in a small dark corner deep inside my mind. I don’t know when I’ll be ready to properly open that box. To sift through it’s contents piece by piece, properly examining and analysing the truths they reveal about my decisions and the choices I’ve made. I’m a firm believer in trying to live without regret, we’re all just doing the best we can in any given moment and should never excessively scrutinise our past selves for doing their best. But that doesn’t mean you can’t let your mind wander to the other possibilities that could have been.

As a point of comparison I am the healthiest I’ve been in years and am in a relatively good space for my own physical health and wellbeing. While sacrifices are inevitable I’m so incredibly lucky to be in a sport that’s well supported and that the longevity of these sacrifices is getting challenged year on year thanks to the amazing work of our support staff. I have faith that I’ll be okay when I leave rowing and my health will be too. There are also others who sacrifice far more for their sporting endeavours, potentially due to weight requirements or just the physical requirements of their sport in general, and my heart goes out to anyone who can relate to questioning these quiet tradeoffs.

Sacrifices are never easy, but when you’re doing it for something you love it certainly makes the decision simpler. So although my career choice does have it sacrifices and does leave me sitting with questions sometimes, I’m lucky that I feel so passionately about its pursuits that I don’t feel the need to dwell on them anymore.

6 months ago when I got back from the Olympics I started working as a 1st VIII Rowing Coach back in Melbourne. I’d coached before in different roles but this was the most senior position I’d held within a school program. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from the season and was honestly quite nervous to be coaching at a girls school having only ever worked in an all boys school before.

I’d only applied to work at one school, not even entirely sure if I wanted to coach when I returned to Melbourne. I did all my interviews while overseas preparing for Paris. Done at 4am, while it was still dark out and I was still half asleep, trying my best to appear confident and wise beyond my years. Despite my smiles I had a little voice in my head playing on repeat

“There’s no way they’re going pick a 21 year old to coach a 1st VIII. It’s just not going to happen.”

But by some miracle I ended up getting the job. I remember being absolutely stoked, one of the girls I was in a house with overseas at the time had suggested I applied for the job and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face when I got to tell her I’d been successful.

I had no idea at the time but coaching those girls would become one of the best things I have ever done, both for myself and for my rowing.

Past, present and future versions of me

Put bluntly I came back home from the Games not entirely sure how to show up for myself anymore. When things were hard during our campaign, the momentum that kept me going was the need to show up and be the absolute best I could for others; my teammates.

When I started coaching fresh off the plane from Europe and was still having a really hard time regulating myself, it was again having a group of people I had to show up for that kept me going. But the longer I spent with them I realised it wasn't just about showing up for this girls - I wanted to be someone they could look up to.

A cognitive behavioural therapy tool I’ve been taught to use is exploring the idea of your '“younger self” or “future self” and how your current actions, thoughts and behaviours would interact with them. As someone who struggles with self preservation of her current being to an extent, I really resonate with putting emphasis on caring for past and future versions of yourself instead. And getting to work with younger athletes reminded me of this - wanting to be someone that a younger Hayley needed.

And when I think of the things that made the biggest different to a younger me, and what has helped me keep going when things got hard, it has been the knowledge that I have people in my corner who give me unconditional support.

Defining ‘unconditional support’

I define unconditional support as: the knowledge that someone will always be there for you, not ever because they have to but because they want to, and will continue to do so, no matter the results or outputs you produce.

When I reflect on the relationships that have been most integral to my personal development and growth over the last few years they have been characterised by unconditional support. They’ve been from mentors, teachers, coaches, friends, and older sibling figures alike who had absolutely no reason to show the degree of investment in me that they did. They had no major potential returns, yet they supported me unconditionally always. I knew that heading into big selection events or regattas that no matter what happened, they would still be there for me on the other side whether win or lose.

I think the thing that makes this type of support so important is the fact that they didn’t have to.

Your parents and other family members are people you generally expect to have your back in tough situations, but someone like a mentor or coach doesn’t necessarily have to. I’ve had plenty of coaches who didn’t seem to care at all whether we won or lost, and much less the process we took to getting there. If the result was bad you knew they were going to make sure you had adequate ramifications. Their support, their reaction and their degree of input was always conditional.

Knowing you have unconditional support behind you makes you more willing to dream big, take risks and dare to fail. Because you know that you have people who choose to believe in you and your abilities, and if you happen to fall short that they’ll be there to help pick up the pieces afterwards. It was because I had other people’s unconditional support and belief behind me that I felt capable of chasing success larger than I ever thought possible for someone like me.

When I started coaching and quickly became invested in these girls and their development not just as athletes but as people, I wanted above all else to know that my support for them would never be conditional. We had built a foundation of trust and respect, and I knew they would always give their 110% effort. So win, lose or draw I wanted them to know their “Bad Girl Hay Hay” would always be there waiting at the finish line.

They certainly made my job easy given how successful they were throughout the season …

But even in the parts of the season that weren’t so glamorous I always wanted to make sure they knew they could turn to me.

No matter how drained or depleted I was feeling I knew I wanted to keep showing up for them, just like they kept on showing up for each other day after day. To see them every single session eager to improve, full of laughs and smiles no matter how tired they were with everything else going on in their lives was truly inspirational and made me all the more invested in trying to be the best version of myself for them.

Make the most of it

When the season came to an end I feel like I had finally come to a firm grasp of this notion of unconditional support and just how much it meant to me.

In sport you can never truly dictate the outcome of an event or its results, only the process along the way. And when it came to the end of our season and our final regattas, I knew we couldn’t control if the girls walked away with a medal, but I could control them knowing that either way they would have someone in their corner afterwards.

And from my personal experience that knowledge can mean more than a medal sometimes.

We talked about this idea of unconditional support often. No matter what the outcome was, we would be proud regardless because of their dedication to the process.

I wrote all the girls a letter before we finished the season, this was a little excerpt of it:

“No matter what I will always be here to support and advocate for you, whatever you may need BGHH will be there to help.

My support for you girls is completely unconditional, not subject to any requirements, wins or success. Your constant yapping and struggle to put the tinny down may annoy me sometimes but I love you all to the moon and back regardless. I want you to know I’m someone that will be in your corner no matter the circumstances, each and every one of you deserve to feel loved and supported always.”

I sadly won’t get to coach again this upcoming season because of my national team commitments, but I like to think all the girls I worked with know I’ll always be cheering them on from the sidelines, both in rowing and in life.

The takeaways

• If you have people in your lives who you support unconditionally, let them know. I didn't realise just how empowering it can be until I reflected on how important it had been to my own journey.

• If you’re ever thinking about getting to work with young people I couldn’t recommend it enough. You’ll learn more about yourself than you could ever anticipate.

• And if you are working with young people already, try and be the person a younger version of you would have needed.

I don’t think I’ll ever catch up on the lost sleep or money spent on Golden Pash Juice from last season but I did get a ‘mini-me’ made out of butter, plenty of medals, amazing birthday cakes & cards, 10/10 nicknames, a million sunrise photos, slay capcut edits, a HOSG 1st VIII title (followed by maybe some blue green algae exposure), a ridiculous amounts of laughs and enough smiles to last a lifetime as compensation.

I could write about how amazing these girls are for an eternity but it probably still wouldn’t do them justice. I cannot express how grateful I am for them, as well as for the people in my life who come before them who taught me just how incredibly important unconditional support is.

Knowing you have people in your corner no matter what, just because they want to and not because they have to, is truly like having a superpower. Cherish it and share it wherever you can, you never know what it might end up leading to.

- BGHH

And while this has been great from a personal growth perspective, it also means you’re constantly looking for your next thing. The next stage. The next step. Always looking to do more, do it now, do it better.

An unrelenting sense of needing to have it all figured it. Right this second.

The pressure to have everything in your life in place, to have a perfect plan of what you’re doing and what the next steps are has become increasingly prevalent in my life as I’ve transitioned further and further into the world elite sport. Coincidently this increase has occurred simultaneously as the relative control over my life has decreased.

A conditional life plan

As an elite athlete, you give away huge amounts of control over the course of your career. Not only in the sense of your day-to-day schedule being mandated by training programs and team commitments, but in what you’re doing for the next month, the next 6 months, even sometimes the next year.

However this control is also conditional. Conditional that you perform. Conditional that you make the team. Conditional that your crew does well. Every plan you may be able to formulate over the next period of time in your life is never with complete certainty. When relatives or friends ask you questions about what your summer will look like or when you’re next heading overseas to compete - you don’t actually know the answer with complete certainty.

And as someone who is a very much a Type A person, this is not fun.

To compensate I find myself constantly trying to grapple with and kickstart Plan’s A, B, C and so on so that I feel as though no matter where I may fall in 6 months time I’ve got something to lock into.

When I came back to Australia after the Olympics I think this was the thing that caused me the most stress. Coming home after riding an emotional roller coaster for the last 12 months and going from having one clear goal and focus, to suddenly being left with no clear plan. No “salient cause” as one of our coaches used to say.

The pressure we put on ourselves

I’m aware this type of pressure/stress isn’t unique to elite sport. No matter where you find yourself in your late teens/early twenties study/work wise, the pressure to have a plan is inevitable. I feel like it’s pretty common to have this pressure compounded too, the intersection of study/work/social life/sport/hobbies etc all amalgamating into one giant stressor. And when you try and tackle these all head on it can make everything seem that much more intense.

Following arriving back from Paris and being hit with the “hmm what next?” question, I somewhat foolishly attempted to launch a multi-pronged attack on all elements. Within a 3 days of getting off the plane I was working, within a week I was back coxing and within a month uni was getting ready to start up again, all while trying to plan what my next 6 months would look like balancing everything while returning to the NTC.

Looking back I think I was just desperately trying to fill any crevices within my life which left any time and space to ruminate on what had occurred over the last 2 years/have to analyse how it had left me feeling and figuring out what to do next. I’m chronically bad at dealing with emotions and this was just another attempt to run away from them. So I jam packed my schedule. Forcibly ramming myself into the ground, cramming my life so full to the brim I didn’t have time to panic about the uncertainty of my future and what felt like millions of steps I needed to be taking to keep moving forward.

Was it the right thing to return to the NTC right away? Was I actually okay after Paris? Was coaching the right call? Should I be doing more uni? Maybe I should be going back to full-time study? Do I even want to be living in Melbourne right now? What if going back to rowing is the wrong call? Will I even get reselected for the AUS team this year?

Every spare moment with time to think felt like I was opening the floodgates. And in the spirit of self preservation, I didn’t feel like drowning. So it was easier simply to keep the floodgates closed and limit that spare time. Limit my time to think. My time to process. My time to panic over not having a clear enough plan.

And boy oh boy did this not work. I might have hung on for a few months but the longer I went the worse things got. September 2024 - March 2025 (while having some good bits) was an absolute mess of a time. I spent more time living out of a suitcase than my own house, jumping between Penrith and Melbourne trying to balance coaching-training-uni. I started working out more, waking up most mornings at 4am to go and run before coaching or throwing in random bikes whenever I had the spare time. This paired with a slow decline in my eating habits and I ended up with months spent in and out of a haze of fatigue and under-fuelling, debilitating any chances of me feeling things too deeply. There were definitely some incredible highs but I was in a constant state of being on the brink of burn out, or having just been pushed over the edge.

I remember one weekend in the middle of summer after spending an entire week packed with coaching/uni and then a full Saturday regatta in Geelong (I’m talking 6-6, 12hr day at the regatta + commuting), then getting in the car to drive straight to Penrith. A casual 10 hour drive.

Looking back at it I was actually insane. Luckily around 4hrs into the drive I had the sense to book a random motel on the side of the highway that I arrived to at midnight and slept till early hours of the morning before continuing on my way. The whole experience felt like living out the metaphor of running away from my problems. If I just kept moving they couldn’t catch me. Right?

It wasn’t until after this intense period of go-go-go that I properly realised the extent to which I was burning myself out. When I finally slowed down and fully moved to Penrith it felt like I gradually started to create space to process everything I had been avoiding for so long and started to feel more at ease than I had in a really long time.

While I did feel more at ease and felt like I started to create some breathing space, the “figure it all out NOW” mentality is one that can exist quietly.

Saying yes

Even while here semi-perminantly in Penrith and in a good place mentally, I am still learning how to feel comfortable with not having a strangulation-grade grasp on everything in my life.

As I write this I’m currently studying to sit my Semester 1 uni exams, about to start my Semester 2 subjects in a week, at training 6 days a week while preparing to head off to World Championships in September, organising to deliver my AIS Mental Fitness Program ambassadorship presentations, starting work again planning for a school rowing season coaching/recruiting for said season, trying to stay fit with regular exercise, trying to be semi consistent with this Substack writing, and also just doing adult things like laundry, cleaning and cooking for the household.

Don’t get me wrong there are absolutely plenty of people who are juggling drastically more than that. But regardless this list is still a relatively long one and one that is probably the result of a few too many “yes” answers to “what next?“ questions. While I absolutely adore all these endeavours (except maybe laundry/cleaning), I’ve now created a situation in where I’m fighting everyday to try and find space to fit them all.

This is a situation I’m sure many others can relate to and feel like their life is just that bit too jam packed. It’s a blessing and a curse.

On one hand I feel so grateful to be struggling with pursuits of my own choice, and on the other hand I feel frustrated I’m struggling with pursuits of my own choice.

I wish I could say there’s a concrete solution to fixing all this and the constant balancing act I and many others find themselves in, but really there isn't. It’s normal to feel stressed and overworked in today’s society where the pressure to have it all figured out right now is so prevalent.

While there isn’t a proper solution, I’ve actively been trying to practice getting better at handling this pressure and engaging with it curiously. Rather than succumbing to it without much thought, and indulging the desire to do it all without consideration for my own longterm health and happiness in the pursuit of completion.

Advice

Upon reflection and realising I had been somewhat suffocated under the pressure to feel like I had my life together and everything figured out, I’ve had three pieces of advice at the forefront off my mind that I’m really trying to live by more at the moment (easier said than done but you gotta respect a girl for trying).

1. You don’t need to do it all right now

• You can do it all but time will be your pressuring factor. Letting go of this desire to have everything on the go now can ease help ease the stress, you don’t need to do it all right this second

  • Figure out what in your life actually does have immediate time pressures (I promise its less than you think), and anything else you can do at a pace that works to support your growth, not suffocate you in it

2. Trust yourself to make the right decisions

• Have your own back and know that when it is time to make decisions about what to do, you will make the right choice

• And trust if you don’t make the right choice, you can make the choice right

  • Building intrinsic evidence that you can manage yourself and your endeavours builds confidence that when things do get hard, you know you will be able to make decisions that will be of benefit in the long run

3. Focus on the process, not the outcome

• If you do your job well, the rest will take care of itself.

  • Focus on expending energy on the processes and systems that will help you reach your goal, rather than getting hyper-fixated on the certainty of the outcome

These may sound overly simplistic or cliché but they’re words I’ve had repeated to me by those older and wiser than myself who I think are living proof one can actually try and tackle the pressure to have it all figured out.

There’s so much more I could say on this topic but at this point in time I’ve got 3 loads of laundry that need addressing, a truckload of emails to get to, a practice exam sitting open on my desk calling my name and a run to go on. So I’ll leave this ramble and my 3 pieces of advice with you and try and get to powering through my to-do list. But I’ll do it with a bit of reassurance knowing that it’s okay if I don’t get it all done right this second or if I don’t have it all figured out just right now.

The reality of being part of a centralised program in elite sport is that you can be forced to pack up and move away to a different city or state with little notice and little idea as to how long you may actually be there. I remember when I first moved to Penrith in 2023 I jumped on a plane to relocate my life with no idea how many months I would be there, not knowing my new housemates and having never even seen a photo of where I would be living.

Part of it is beyond exciting, the thrill of a completely unknown and new adventure awaiting, especially as someone who had only just turned 20 at the time. Equally it is absolutely daunting. You’re throwing everything you know out the window and starting fresh with extremely minimal control over what your new life with look like.

I was extremely fortunate that my new house, new housemates and new life was more than I ever could have hoped for and made a lot of the stress and anxiety of the situation I was in melt away. It felt like I had been adopted by 2 older siblings I had never knew I had and living with them was an amazing experience - I am so incredibly lucky to have had people who were pretty much strangers agree to take me in.

Ever since the end of 2022 I’ve never known where I’m going to be living for anymore the 6 months at a time, often for much less. I’ve probably spent more time living out of a suitcase, sleeping in people’s spare rooms, travelling overseas, in “temporary” rentals and away on camps than in my own bed in Melbourne.

I was always trying to make it into the AUS team, then once in team trying to make the Centre, and then once at the Centre trying to stay at the Centre, then trying to repeat it all over again. Not to mention this whole process disrupted by weeks and months spent overseas, often again not entirely sure what you’re going to be doing when you get back home to Australia.

You pack up your whole life into boxes and suitcases before you get on a plane, not knowing what your future living situation holds until you’re pretty much on the return flight back. I remember leaving for World Champs in Serbia in 2023 and a group of us having absolutely no idea whether we would be invited back to the NTC or not until after the competition. A Bronze medal for us not only meant Olympic qualification but also certainty of NTC scholarships for the upcoming year.

With this process you’re exisiting in a constant cycle of uncertainty. Never stationary for long enough to fully feel like you’ve found your footing.

This instability can drastically alter your perception of what “home” is.

By definition home is “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” However when you fail to kind of live somewhere permanently with the potential for an ever-changing household, it can leave you feeling a bit like you’re without a proper home.

I remember prior to selection trials this year one of my biggest worries was what I would do about my living situation if I didn’t make the team. I was splitting my time living between Melbourne and Penrith where I was in a new house with 4 other rowers. While flying and driving back-and-forth between the two places every few weeks, I had grown so accustomed to living in this house with my friends that I couldn’t grasp the idea of not being with them and in the home I’d started imaging the next 6 months of my life in.

On the flip side I was still currently trying to navigate my life being back in my family home in Melbourne. It had been a shock to the system coming home from the Games after being gone for the last few years, and was somewhere I struggled to reconcile the growth I’d gone through as an individual and the place I was in mentally before I had moved away. And while being in Melbourne felt weird at times, the glimpses of normalcy and having a job I adored made me scared I was doing the wrong thing heading back to Penrith so soon.

I had a conversation about all this with someone a few weeks prior to our 2024 National Team trials and they reminded me of the slightly cliché but extremely true saying that “home is where the heart is”.

I might have rolled my eyes at first but a moment of reflection at my life the past 2.5 years affirmed to me they actually had a point. “Home” during that period had chopped and changed more times than I could count but despite that I had continue to find and build more connections with people. I really like the idea that the most important people in your life at any given point are actually totally up to you (something I’m sure I’ll write a whole article on at some point), and it was/is the people in my life who make me feel grounded, not ever a physical place. Whether in Penrith, Gavirate, Henley, Paris, Melbourne or anywhere in between I didn’t really mind as long as I had the people who made me feel okay and that when things got hard that it would continue to be okay.

Acknowledging this point is something that really helped ground me heading into trials when I couldn’t help but stress about where I would end up at the end of it all. Ultimately it didn’t matter where I ended up, because I knew that I would be able to figure out any housing situation that arose (like we had all managed to do the past few years) and as long as I had people to be connected to I would be okay. And when you’ve got good friends like I’m lucky enough to have, you will always feel connected, no matter where you are.

I still don’t know where I’ll be living in 6 months time and realistically this situation of uncertainty is something I and many other athletes may have to grapple with for their entire careers. And while it will probably always bring some sense of anxiety and stress, knowing where your home will be doesn’t matter as much as long as you know your heart can be there too.

On Saturday the 5th of July the AUS W8+ was "defeated by 2/3 of a length” in the semi-final of The Remenham Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta.

Our anticipation for this race had been building for months. We had been given the opportunity to race at arguably the most prestigious regatta in the world in the Premier Women’s 8+ event in front of tens of thousands of spectators. Australia hadn't won the event since 2018 and we would be up against the currently undefeated Great British W8+ on their home ground. We were going in as the underdogs having yet to stand atop the podium this international season - a true David v Goliath match up. It was a race for the ages.

My excitement towards this was almost as close to the that of an Olympic final. The crowds roaring, conditions constantly changing, the margins razor sharp - anything can happen between the Booms at Henley.

Before the race our crew was absolutely buzzing. Having been in Henley since Monday but being forced to wait until Saturday to finally get our chance to run down the track, we were like dogs ready to be let off the leash. With rain and wind battering down on Henley we were set for a rough and long race. Despite the roaring headwind and aggressive rain, we were eager to get to the start line. To prove to ourselves and everyone else watching what we could do. Quiet whisperings and echoes of “I’ve got a good feeling about this” and “we can do this I know we can” were passed up and down the boat between the yells of support and excitement through our warm up pieces.

Sat at the start line I remember shaking with what was probably a mix of slight hypothermia from the inclement weather, and nerves towards what was about to unfold.

2112m of what we knew would be nothing short of dog fight.

2112m to make history.

Before we knew it the flag was dropped, and we were away and moving.

And before we knew it the race was over.

And we had lost.

Despite the excitement, the anticipation, the hardwork, the preparation, the planning, the gut instinct this would be something special, it wasn’t enough.

It’s the harsh reality of sport. Sometimes your best just isn’t enough.

We parked our boat on the pontoon, gave each other some needed tight hugs, shared our disappointment over the result, but also the pride we had in the race we put together. We debriefed, derigged our boat and began packing away the end of our Henley campaign.

As we were walking over to the boat park to load our 8+ onto the trailer I had a notification come through on my phone that instantly changed my perspective on the day.

On July 5th 2025 I was 100 days clean from self harm for the first time in years.

My mental health issues aren’t something I’ve spoken about publicly before but it's something I’ve struggled a lot with in private over the last few years.

100 days ago I wasn’t sure I’d ever be racing again. I didn’t know how I would go putting myself back into the pressure cooker that is being on an Australian national senior team when I was still struggling to cope with life healthily. The last 2 years had left me a shell of a person at times and I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to handle it again. My reality of living with suicidal ideation and self harm was that I felt like I’d lost trust in myself and my mind. Despite the years of working desperately to try and get it back and learn to better cope with how my mind worked, I still didn’t know how I would go on a campaign again if things got bad.

And yet here I was. In the eye of the storm where things had gone bad. We’d had the week from hell and been spat out the other end with a devastating loss. But despite it all, I was okay - I had made it to the end of our entire campaign okay. And for the first time in years I knew I would continue to be okay.

The last 100 days have shown me more than ever how much I have to be grateful for in my life and how much good I have surrounding me. And that because of all the good in my life that when things do go wrong, when the storm does start to grow and I feel like I'm absolutely engulfed in it again, that I have people who are willing to weather it with me.

So when my phone buzzed to notify me of my "100 day milestone”, I almost felt grateful for our loss. Because despite losing that race it reminded me of just how much I had gained and grown on the journey to getting there.

The Hayley of 100 days ago would have struggled to cope with overwhelming feelings of shame, disappointment, panic, frustration and distress from the situation we found ourselves in after losing that race. But instead I was able to smile, to process the disappointment from the loss but acknowledge how much we had also achieved. We’d had a great race and shown some great improvements on where we had started our campaign.

The afternoon and evening that followed racing was one of my all time favourites. Not because the party was particularly wild or anything crazy ensued, but because getting to dance and sing along with my friends and smile genuine smiles after defeat was something I didn’t always think I would stick around long enough to see again.

These last 5 weeks overseas on our European campaign have been nothing short of hectic. Between changing crews, countries, combinations, coaches and everything in between, plus injuries, illness, accommodation issues, challenging weather and dodgy equipment - we have dealt with it all.

Before we left to come on this trip I was quietly terrified that I woudnt’t be able to handle it. The last international campaign I did although absolutely amazing in many areas also left me deeply scarred. I was scared that same would happen this time around too. That my mind would slowly start unravelling again and the hard work all my doctors, psychologists and I had put in to help myself be healthier would come undone. But this trip has been everything I could have hoped for and more. Despite the chaos and carnage, the wins and the losses, we all made it through in one piece. And despite losing Henley and not walking away with a little red box, the perspective it’s given me and the gratitude I have for even being there and being okay in the first place, feels infinitely more special.

It seems slightly poetic that my little 100 day marker and the last race of this campaign happened to be on the same date. A soft reminder that I have gotten through hard things and that I will continue to get through hard things. A day that in past maybe would have pushed me over the edge has now given me more hope for the future.

Speaking up about mental health issues is never easy, but I hope this article gives anyone else who may be struggling hope that one day it really does get better.

If you or anyone you know is dealing with issues of self harm or suicidal thoughts, reach out for support now. There is always people there to weather the storm with you.

LIFELINE - 13 11 14

BEYOND BLUE - 1300 22 4636

Firstly massive thanks for all the support on my first article :)

You can read it here if you haven't yet!

I didn’t think it would resonate with as many people as it did so glad that my experience and journey can be of use to others. Upon uploading it and setting my laptop down I became stumped with a somewhat surprising feeling of “okay, now what?”

What do I write now? What’s next?

When I decided to share my writing I didn’t do it with many expectations in mind, just an underlying feeling that maybe it was the right thing to do. Over the last few years I’ve learnt a lot about how important reflection, sharing stories and vulnerability are as human practices, particularly in elite sport. They’re what create self growth, community and relationships, and it’s been through friends, mentors and professional support that I’ve learnt how valuable they are. Without them and the people who showed me how important they are I don’t think I would have been able to get through some really dark periods I’ve had.

These principals were what was floating around in the back of my head when I decided to press the share button on all of this, and are what I hope stays floating through my head when I share again in future.

I think the question of “what now?” and the underlying sense of panic, urgency and anxiety that comes hand-in-hand with it is probably due to my lowkey (okay maybe highkey) perfectionism and the notion I needed to have another article perfectly curated and ready to post ASAP. But the issues with that is I don’t quite know what that next “perfect” article should be.

I get wrapped up in the pursuit of perfection on the best of days, but I don’t want this page getting trapped in that same situation. So instead of fixating on perfection and finding the ideal next idea to write, I’m forcing myself to just progress instead.

To simply write with those same principles of reflection, sharing stories and vulnerability in mind, rather than a need for this all to feel perfect.

So basically I don’t quite know what I’m going to write about. I don’t quite know how often it will be shared. I don’t even really know who the audience for this work is. But I know if it can be of any sort of help to anyone going through similar situations then it could be a good thing.

If you have any ideas of what you would like to see me write about than let me know!

Feel free to comment, send me a message or respond on Instagram. Whether it’s about my journey as a coxswain, the Olympics, mental health & wellbeing, coaching, study or anything else, always happy to try and share some insights.

I’m also uploading another article today as a little training diary/mish-mash of current thoughts through this euro campaign, so feel free to go give that a read too ;). It’s a bit random and all over the place, but resisting the temptation for the need for it to feel perfect before sharing.

Training diaries - 001

I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for others sharing their stories with me, so am excited to try and do the same.

- Hayley :)

This little town is where the AIS’s European Training Centre (ETC) is located and where I’ve had the pleasure of spending a good chunk of the last 3 Australian winters.

Coincidentally while I’ve been an athlete at the ETC for periods of 2023-25, the first time I visited Gavirate was actually in 2022. The U23 World Rowing Championships were being raced at the next door town of Varese and I was staying in Gavirate to watch the regatta at the end of my Euro summer trip. I remember walking past the ETC most days and quietly hoped to myself that maybe one day I would get to train out of it’s confines. I think 19 year old me would be pretty stoked I ended up doing that just 12 months later (something I definitely didn’t think was on the cards at the time).

Aussies in Italia

Having spent a decent amount of time here now, I like to think I know the area relatively well. The entire Rowing Australia Team collectively has spent so much time in Gavirate that the day to day goings of our group are pretty predictable. If you were to ask anyone their plans on an afternoon off, it would probably comprise of:

• “Going to grab a créma at Cardys”

• “Dinner at the Garden tonight”

• “Was thinking of getting some gelato at Cobblestones or we could also get a van going to Pinopenguino”

• “Carrefour run later surely?”

• “Would be rude not to head to Belvedere or Lorenzos”

A few of these places aren’t even referred to by their actual names anymore (like how the original “Belvedere” restaurant has been closed for a number of years now) but I guess we’re so engrained in our ways that there isn’t much hope of us changing what we call them now.

Not only is Gavirate filled with little gems of eateries, we’re spoilt for choice with nearby towns and lakes with an abundance of swimming spots and amazing hole-in-the-wall restaurants if you know where to look. I’ve been blessed with some amazing friends who know their way around Lombardy very well and as a result I get to enjoy some 10/10 meals and swims on our afternoons and weekends off.

It’s definitely one of the perks of being an elite athlete. Getting to escape the Melbourne/Penrith cold to enjoy the warmer climate and tiny glimpses of a European holiday when we get downtime. Yes the rest of your time is jam packed with training and racing but some gelato and a healthy tan certainly helps make it easier to manage.

Lucerne, Switzerland

At the time of writing this we are currently 2 days away from departing to Lucerne for our second World Cup regatta. Lucerne is one of, if not, my favourite place we get to visit with rowing. The city is absolutely beautiful, the “Lake of the Gods” is spectacular to train and race on and the regatta is always filled with exciting racing.

Rowing Australia has been staying in the same hotel for decades and it’s situated pretty much in the heart of the city. Our daily commute takes us right through some of Lucerne's most iconic sites, and an evening walk just down the road lets us explore them further. Regatta weeks you always ended up with what feels like an excessive amount of downtime and walking around town is one of the best ways to spend this I’ve found. You couldn’t ask for a better spot to kill time in than Lucerne.

While Lucerne is one of the best locations to compete in, having success at the regatta is something that has somewhat eluded the AUS W8+ the last few years while I’ve been on the team.

• World Rowing Cup III 2023 - 3rd Heat, 3rd Final

• World Rowing Cup II 2024 - 2nd Heat, 4th Final

The race replays of both of these regatta’s finals are definitely not our finest displays of racing tactics. In the 2023 Final we were leading the field convincingly till about 250m to go, before we were rowed through by GB & Canada to finish 3rd. In the 2024 Final we were dropped out of the blocks and never recovered finishing a disappointing 4th after we had come 2nd in the heat. While both not the result we had hoped for they were certainly learning experiences - its a race to 2000m (not the 1 or 1.5km), and whatever you do, do not get left behind out of the start.

Learning to race again

This year again irrespective of the results of the Lucerne regatta, it will undeniably be another learning experience. We have a new crew line up, many of which will be racing for the first time at this iconic rowing location. An exciting challenge heading into such a prominent regatta with a large entry field and a newly formed crew. It will also be the first time racing where I’m arguably one of the “most experienced” members of my crew. The last few years I’ve been a baby of our group, always the youngest and usually one of the only people in the crew experiencing a “first” whenever we head to a new location or racing situation.

However this new international season has brought many “firsts” for our entire team. First time racing in different boat classes, first time racing a complete double-up in the 8+ and for some their first time racing at a World Cup (yes the debutants!!!!). These new experiences have encouraged us all to embrace the season with a new level of open-mindness which has been extremely refreshing. While past experiences are always valuable learning tools, it feels exciting to be undergoing radical change and growth. Embracing the new and redefining what we thought was possible with our racing. This goes not only for the action of racing but how we’re racing as well. As a team we’ve had an immense focus on the notion of racing smarter, not just harder. The way we approach races now and our processes stepping through each 100m marker simultaneously feel familiar but also completely new.

I’ve really enjoyed this process of relearning and redefining how we approach racing and our processes around it. While it can be daunting embracing change and shifting your understanding of something you thought you had under control, it’s hard to grown from a place of comfort.

I’m excited to see how this Lucerne regatta goes. Winning a medal there is something very difficult to achieve and I look forward to embracing the challenge with our newly formed crew. It will again be an experience of “firsts” but I like to think our team’s ability to handle them is improving day by day of this campaign. So onwards to Lucerne, the Lake of the Gods and our final two weeks in this year’s hot girl euro summer (aka euro racing season).

Recently I raced at this year’s World Rowing Cup I in Varese, Italy coxing the AUS W8+.

2 years ago I made my debut for the Australian W8+ in the same place at the 2023 World Rowing Cup II, where we were fortunate enough to come away with a gold medal.

I was 20 years old, 16,00km from home and feeling extremely out of my depth. It had been a whirlwind few months from attending trials, being selected into the Senior Australian Team, moving to Penrith NSW, starting a senior campaign and basically what felt like learning how to do my job as a coxswain all over again.

Looking back it was a time in my life where it felt like everyday was clouded with uncertainty and honestly a fair bit of fear and panic; worry of the unknown and what each new day would bring. I was absolutely desperate to perform for my crewmates and team. Some days the pressure to ‘get it right’ felt all consuming, to the point that I was drowning in apprehension and angst. But despite this I managed to drag myself through my first few months on the team (with plenty of help from those around me) and even ended up making it to the end of my first ever international regatta with a gold medal.

While it was a surreal experience, the memories of us celebrating and the elation of the win will probably always remain juxtaposed in my mind with the impending sense of doom I felt in the lead up, and quite frankly afterwards as well. I didn’t really know how to mentally process this milestone in my career/life as a young adult, and probably should have used asked for a little bit more guidance from those around me.

So if I could go back and do it all again, have another chance to start my journey towards an Olympics, I would give 20 year old me a few pieces of advice.

1. Do not let a bad result or performance make you feel like a bad person

A classic experience for many athletes or high performers is the attachment of their personal value to the level of their performances. An inability to seperate what happens in racing and how you view yourself as an individual can be a crippling dilemma that leaves you feeling completely hollow when you get to the end of a regatta or race that didn’t quite go the way you planned. My early experiences on the senior team were often clouded this attachment, the feeling that if I didn’t utterly excel in my job then I was a fundamentally flawed; that I wasn’t just a bad coxswain but a bad person.

I felt as though my result and my performance were a direct reflection of me as a whole, not simply the small part of me that was linked to coxing.

(**this may also say a lot about the notion of personal identity in elite athletes and the inability to seperate yourself from you sport but that’s a discussion for another day).

When I felt I had failed or not performed to my best, self hatred and despise would begin permeating through me. Somedays I genuinely hated every fibre of my being for my inability to be the person I thought my teammates deserved and needed. I’ve realised over the years one of my biggest internal worries is letting others down, and as a result when I felt as though my performance had done just that, let others down, a spiral of anger and frustration at myself would always ensue. But this self inflicted correlation between performance and identity is not one that is helpful. As I’ve grown older (and maybe ever so slightly wiser) I’ve been able to slowly start detaching myself from the notion that I am only as good as my performance on the water through the realisation that I’m actually not helping myself or my teammates by getting hyper-fixated on my shortcomings and failures.

Getting trapped in the mental downwards spiral that is self hatred merely limits your mental capacity to focus on what actually does matter; learning how to be better. Self compassion and understanding is a far better lens to utilise when analysing your own performance and being able to regulate and manage your emotions in the high stress environment that is racing and competitions. Approaching yourself with the same level of empathy you would your teammates and using this to be kind and compassionate internally will help give you the mental space to process what mistakes you may have made, as well as room to plan how to better navigate them in future. When I started learning to seperate my performances from me and stop beating myself up for every mistake I made, I was actually able to start doing my job a hell of a lot better.

2. Be brave and ask for help when you need it

I was insanely privileged with the group of girls I had as crew mates and team members for my first year on the team. Among them were girls I had gone through my years of underage rowing with and girls I had spent the last few years coaching along side. I was lucky enough to be with some of my friends, along side girls who were also

• World Champions

• World Cup Winners

• Multi time Olympians

• World’s Record Holders

• Olympic Medalists

I had some of the best of the absolute best around me. Yet despite this there were times where I felt scarily alone. I was in a completely new environment, trying to tackle an immense learning curve and terrified of letting people down. For some reason I thought if I admitted to other people how much I was struggling, I was somehow was going to make everything worse (despite the fact that it was glaringly obvious I was struggling with my job in the first place). Add in the ‘rinse and repeat’ cycle of fail-drown in self hatred-repeat, and I really wasn’t doing myself any favours by trying to tackle most of my problems on my own.

And ultimately I did actually end up in situations where I had some amazing teammates step in to help me, but it had taken me basically ending up at the point of completely mentally capitulating to get there. Again not a super helpful situation to find oneself in.

If I had the opportunity to do it all again, I’d tell myself to be that little bit braver to ask for help when I first realised I needed it. Using the term ‘be brave’ in the context of asking for help may sound silly but to a freshly appointed national team member, sometimes it felt like the most daunting thing I could do - that somehow admitting I needed support would only exacerbate the problems I was having. But really it would have probably done the opposite. When I did eventually figure out how to start communicating better with my teammates and asking for help when I needed it, whether from friends or professional support, it actually did make a difference (who would have thought?!).

Realising you can actually lean on those who are there for you is like discovering a superpower you never knew you had. Being able to ask for and accept the support and guidance from those who are more knowledgeable and experienced than you can only ever be of benefit, to both you and your teammates.

3. It is okay if being present means feeling calm

I feel like the advice “be present” is something that is thrown around loosely a lot in a high performance context. Whether dealing with training or competition, the notion of being where your feet are always made sense to me in a theory but I always struggled to grasp how to apply it literally. How are you simply meant to push aside the millions of stressors and panic-causers floating around in your head at the push of a button? Sounded like an old wives tale to me and something that wasn’t actually able to be used in practice. But lo-and-behold a good few years later having dealt with being put in a some pretty high stress environments, I would like to think I actually now have a good grasp on “how to be present”.

The realisation that helped me start to be feel like I was able to be present in the moment was that it is actually okay to feel calm.

I think I had always had the belief that in order to be focused and prepared for high stress situations, I also had to feel high levels of stress in the build up. If I wasn’t trying to subdue waves of anxiety constantly into the lead up of an event then I clearly just wasn’t prepared enough is almost how I would describe my internal belief system. As if stress and anxiety needed to be pulsating through me in order to feel in control. But at some stage (probably in the lead up to Paris with the help of some teammates and friends) I started to realise that for me as an individual that actually wasn’t super helpful.

I like to think of my approach now to the pressure of performance sort of similar to utilising the power of procrastination. This might sound silly but by definition procrastination is “the action of delaying or postponing something”. If you think about procrastination in the context of school or university studies, yes you may sometimes delay getting to work but ultimately when crunch time comes around, you still get it done. I use this mentality to help mediate my stress around competition.

I know that the stress of racing will inevitably be there the few hours before racing, and maybe in waves for the days leading up, but I’m not doing myself any favours forcing myself to feel that stress any earlier or more intensely than I need. So instead I simply procrastinate it instead. Delay or postpone my feelings of unease or nerves. By actively accepting it wasn’t helpful for me to be a highly strung ball of anxiety in the lead up to races, and instead embracing that it is okay to be calm, it is okay to be relaxed and engage in whatever other acts of normalcy keep me ground in day to day life, I started to handle racing a lot better.

By the nature of my job I am inherently good at handing high pressure situations and being able to remain calm when the stakes are high. Yet for some reason I didn’t trust myself to manage stress to the same extent when it was just me who had to deal with it, rather than when I’m managing it for my crew. Figuring out what works for me and being okay with whatever that looked like, taking away the pressure to confirm to whatever I thought “being present” had to look like, made a massive difference.

4. Bonus point: it will all actually be okay

Last point but maybe the most important. If I had the opportunity to time travel back to 2023 and get to see me before I competed in that first international regatta, before I took the first step on a journey that would ultimately lead me to the Olympics, I think I would just tell Hayley it will all be okay. That I will be okay. That things will work out, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. Trusting the process isn’t easy to do sometimes but the simple reminders can make the difference. The simple reminders are probably what 20 year old me needed the most :)

I have been someone who has ‘pursued excellence’ for the majority of my cognitive life. engrained in me from early childhood I undeniably have sought to be the best in all that I do (whether for better or for worse). school work, sports, art, extracurriculars, work, pretty much any element of my life there’s been a notable fixation on aiming high. some would argue this is an excellent trait to possess! that my parents have done a fantastic job engraining such a strong work ethic in me! that aiming high is nothing to be ashamed of! and to these points I concur; it has certainly aided my life in many realms and helped pushed me to become the person I am today. but it is also something that has stunted my growth in other areas.

before I started rowing I was involved in gymnastics, athletics, ballet, drama, art classes, swimming, soccer and probably some other assortment of childhood activities only my mum would be able to recall now. the one thing all these pastimes have in common is that I quit. and quit them all for the same reason; I wasn’t good at them. at one point I’m sure I thoroughly enjoyed all of the above, I remember loving my swimming classes and running around on the soccer field. but at some point as a little 10-11 year old, I decided I simply wasn’t good at them anymore. or more importantly wasn’t good enough at them anymore. my enjoyment in sport and other extracurriculars was primarily underpinned by my desire to be good at them. to win medals, to come home with trophies, to have the best artwork and to have all the lead roles in our school plays. If I wasn’t achieving those things, if I wasn’t on a trajectory towards perfection, then I didn’t want it.

as I got older and gained more independence in my life this fixation of the idea of perfection subtly leaked into my day to day habits. simply put I developed an apprehension to do a lot of things. whether it was engaging in hobbies, completing admin work, going on outings, wanting to try new things, deciding how and when to complete tasks, somedays even simple tasks like eating meals felt out of reach. if I didn’t feel like I could do something ‘perfectly’ (whatever that meant for a specific context), I didn’t feel like I should do it at all. almost like I didn’t know how to. obviously the extent of this apprehension ebbed and flowed and in many cases it did pass eventually. but the lingering feelings of anxiety, dread and unease still plague a lot of my decision making even today.

I apologise that this has been a very long and convoluted introduction to basically explaining what I’m doing with this page. I quite frankly am tired of living a life where I feel chained by the preconceived notions my own brain has made up about the world and my place in it, and know that without change I will continue to feel trapped by my own thoughts and intrinsic beliefs (that I have to keep reminding myself actually don’t have any evidence as to being accurate).

so here I am. trying to make change. trying to make progress. I’ve always enjoyed writing and as someone who tends to have a lot of time to think in relative solitude (shoutout to my million hours sitting in the front of a tinny), I thought this could be a nice way to share some things I’ve been pondering on. I could sit here ruminating on the contents of this post and whether it’s good enough to share and how it makes me look to others or will be perceived. but I could also simply remind myself that it actually doesn’t matter. it doesn’t need to be perfect. I don’t want to let the pursuit of perfection stop me from starting. I won’t let the pursuit of perfection stop me from making any progress in the first place.