I wanted change to come in flashes, leaps and bounds, and all at once.
Occasionally I was blessed with opportunities, but with this mentality, I was stuck.
I was stuck in an institution. I had a degree. I had an identity.
Living in the UK, one of the best things I did was move from a sponsorship visa to a youth mobility visa.
It allowed me to get a different job whilst staying in the city I loved.
Did it love me back?
Hard to know. However, it was foundational in figuring out who I was, then who I wasn't, and connecting me with my soul family.
When I quit paramedics for the first time (yes, some lessons need to be learnt twice),
I worked as a hostess in a hip roastery during the day and a dark and stormy restaurant in the evening. It sat beside St Pancras Station.
Mainly, it gave me space.
Not time, certainly not money, but space.
I met artists studying next door at the academy. I met musicians, creatives, and people who didn't look at me as though I was irrational for wanting something different.
Whenever I spoke to people in healthcare about leaving paramedicine, the response was almost always identical.
"But... what are you going to do?"
The question came with wide eyes and genuine concern, as though stepping outside the institution was unimaginable.
Eventually, I realised the question wasn't really about me.
It reflected something so many carry:
A longing for a different life, buried beneath financial pressure, identities, expectations, and burnout.
I began running meditation classes from the four-bedroom house I'd somehow manifested in South London.
A handful of people came.
Then a few more.
Eventually, I moved into a yoga studio inside a converted law firm in Peckham, and the classes continued to grow.
Nothing happened overnight.
Everything happened gradually.
By then, I was balancing hospitality work with a small business while watching the days disappear on my visa.
I desperately wanted to remain in the UK.
I felt trapped between the life I was building and the reality that I couldn't yet support myself doing it.
So I returned to paramedicine.
Just two months later, the pandemic hit.
Returning became both a blessing and a burden.
I was able to serve people. End-of-life care was consequential to me.
But the work consumed me.
By the second wave, I knew something inside me had changed forever.
I left again.
This time, I never went back.
Afterwards, I spent a year travelling.
I fell in love.
I had my heart broken.
I chased the dream of becoming a travelling healer and digital nomad, only to watch parts of that dream collapse around me.
At the time, it felt like another failure.
Looking back, it was essential.
Eventually, I returned home to Australia carrying grief, debt, and uncertainty.
There was relief in returning home.
The familiarity of family.
The feeling of standing on home soil again.
I changed from job to job whilst prioritising growing my healing practice around the edges of everyday life.
Opportunities felt rare.
Progress was slow.
Yet something important was happening beneath the surface.
The hardest lesson I learnt:
More often than not, doing the thing I was avoiding was the only way to move through the discomfort.
Real transformation isn't usually born from one giant leap.
It's built from hundreds of ordinary decisions repeated over months and years.
Opportunity eventually looks like a breakthrough.
But the breakthrough was never the beginning.
It was simply the visible result of all the invisible work that came before it.