This wasn’t born from inspiration.
It was born from rupture.
From the kind of pain that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but seeps in slowly—like smoke under the door—until you realise you’ve been choking for months, maybe years.
When my mum left, everything shifted. That kind of leaving isn’t just emotional—it’s architectural. It changes the structure of your life. And suddenly, I wasn’t a daughter in a family. I was the adult expected to hold things together.
Because I was single, my dad moved in with me. That phrase—“because I was single”—haunts me more than I care to admit. It wasn’t a decision made with me. It was a decision made about me. Like my availability wasn’t a boundary, but a resource. Like my space, my time, my energy—all of it—was just lying around, waiting to be filled by someone else’s crisis.
I thought we’d be in this together—me and my sisters. I assumed that if one of us was falling, the others would lock arms. But instead, they watched me take the hit. Watched me carry the weight. Watched me drown. And I don’t know if it was indifference, fear, or self-preservation… but it left me alone. And angry. And grieving people who were still alive.
My boyfriend—who I thought might hold my hand through it—let go instead.
He’d always met the strong version of me. The one with plans, jokes, pep talks, backup plans, and three different strategies. But when I finally showed the version of me that was exhausted, broken, unsure—he recoiled. He told me I complained too much. That I was too much. That he didn’t sign up for the version of me that needed.
So he left too.
It wasn’t just the heartbreak. It was the confirmation that even love had terms and conditions. Even vulnerability had a price. That maybe, just maybe, there wasn’t space for me to not be okay—not as a daughter, not as a sister, not as a partner.
And in all of this, my business—the thing I had built with heart, guts, and sleepless nights—started to feel like a guest in my own life. There was no space for it. Not emotionally, not physically. I couldn’t hear my own thoughts anymore. I couldn’t breathe. My home didn’t feel like mine. My days didn’t feel like mine. Even my words—my most sacred currency—were ignored, dismissed, or talked over. Like I was only valid when I was useful. When I looked and sounded like the version of me they liked.
So I started writing. Not for them. For me.
Because if I didn’t write it, I’d disappear under it.
That’s where Instalments was born. Not from clarity. Not from some grand epiphany. But from the need to stay alive inside my own story. To reclaim my voice before I forgot how it sounded. To say the things I couldn’t say out loud because they’d be “too much,” “too heavy,” or “too personal.”
This isn’t a healing story. Not yet.
It’s just a first instalment from a woman who is learning—through fire—that if you don’t tell your own truth, someone else will rewrite it for you.
And I’m not letting that happen again.