Letters From Fai
30 articles
I Took the Hard Road, They Said It Had the Best Views
Here is a question I have been sitting with: If someone offered you a shortcut - not a cheat, not a bypass, but a genuine, faster way through - would you take it? Or would you need to feel your way there first? Would you need to walk the whole long road, with its wrong turns and its weather, before you trusted where you'd arrived? I have been asking myself this honestly. And the honest answer is: I think I needed the long road. Not because suffering is noble or because hardship is a prerequisite for growth. But because of something more specific to how I am wired. I needed the felt sense.
More in Letters From Fai
The Meadow of Memories: What If Every Experience You've Had Deserves Equal Ground?
It stretches as far as you can see in every direction. And in it, flowers. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Each one is a different colour, a different height, a different shape. Some of them face the sun. Some of them are bent slightly from the weather they have lived through. Some are in full bloom. Some are past their peak.
Signs from the Universe: How to Listen When Life Is Speaking to You
I want to tell you about two things that happened to me recently. By any objective measure, neither of them is remarkable. One involved a car. The other involved chewing gum.
The Words & Contemplations Podcast: Conversations, Meditations and the Things We Wish Someone Had Said Sooner
There is a particular kind of company that a podcast can offer. You are driving somewhere, or walking somewhere, or doing the necessary but not particularly fulfilling task of existing in the world, and there are two voices in your ears. You don't know these people, not really. But you've grown fond of them in the way you grow fond of anyone who is consistently honest with you about the things that matter. We wanted to build that.
The Quiet Heartbreak of Watching People Stay
There is a particular kind of heartbreak that does not come from loss. It comes from watching someone you love remain in a life that is slowly dimming them. You see it in the way they speak about themselves. In the exhaustion that never lifts. In the habits they defend but quietly resent.
A Softer Way to Begin: Introducing the Words & Contemplations Podcast
Words & Contemplations starts her podcast journey, bringing you blogs in audio format as well as meditations, gentle practices and talks. Come along for the journey; we'd love to have you tune in.
The Space Between the Boxes: A Journey of Unravelling and Reconnecting
What happens when the dust settles after eleven months of wandering? After living out of a single suitcase and a "long list of hell yes's" alongside an even longer list of "no’s," you eventually find yourself standing in the quiet of what used to be your life.
Seeing Desire for What It Really Is
We often look to others to decide what we want. We glimpse a moment in their life — a success, a lifestyle, a relationship - and imagine that having what they have will complete something in us. In truth, what we’re seeing is never the full picture. It’s a snapshot lifted out of a much longer, messier, deeply human story.
The Revelations Found in Astrology and Human Design
I’ve always believed that self-inquiry can be a portal. Sometimes that portal is meditation. Sometimes it’s heartbreak. Sometimes it’s travel, long and lonely and bewildering. But recently, it came in the form of something unexpected:Running my astrological birth chart and my human design through ChatGPT.
What Slowing Down Really Taught Me This Year: Coming Back to My Body, My Life and Myself
As this year comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on what “slowing down” really ended up being for me. When I imagined it, I pictured beaches, sunrise yoga sessions, sunsets with salty hair, and the kind of inner peace that glossy wellness posts make look effortless. And yes, there were moments that felt like that. But most of the time, slowing down wasn’t glamorous. It was messy, humbling, grounding and honest. It looked like a compromise. It asked me to make choices I didn’t always expect. It made me meet myself in ways I had never truly allowed before.
When Coming Home Feels Different: How Space, Change, and Perspective Shape What “Home” Means
Sometimes, stepping away from everything you know is the only way to truly see it.We all have places we’ve outgrown, or thought we had. The home that once felt heavy, the routine that seemed suffocating, the four walls that turned into a mirror for our restlessness. But what if it wasn’t the place holding you back? What if it was what you carried inside it?
Going Home at 38: What It Means and Why It Matters
Home has been in flux for me lately. With travel comes the idea that I’m a nomad, that I can become comfortable wherever I lay my head. And to some extent, it’s true. I open a suitcase, light some incense, set up a playlist, and move on my yoga mat, and I feel grounded. A sense of home lives in these rituals.
Making Peace with Travel Privilege
I used to believe I was a good traveller. Curious. Kind. Conscious. But as I moved through the villages of Vietnam, past rice paddies, crumbling temples, food stalls, and families, I was forced to reckon with a quieter truth. I have always been a privileged traveller. And with that privilege comes a responsibility.
Meeting People With Smiles
In a world that often feels rushed and disconnected, what if the simplest gesture, a smile, could shift not only your day but someone else’s? In this reflection from Bali, I explore the quiet power of going first, of offering joy without expecting anything in return… and what happens when that joy circles back.
What Travel Taught Me About Letting Go: A Journey Beyond the Itinerary
We’ve been in Vietnam for 12 days, and I’d be lying if I said it’s been plain sailing. After the peace we found in Bali, this rhythm of packing up and moving every 4–5 days feels tedious. There was something grounding about our daily yoga practice there, something magical in the stillness that gave our time structure and soul. Now, without that anchor, we find ourselves drifting, disoriented and restless.
Leaving Melbourne: On Love, Privilege, and the Search for Home
I wrote this piece back in April 2022, and it feels poetic that it still holds relevance now, three years later, in April 2025. I’ve left most of it unchanged. It speaks to something tender about the way time carries us—sometimes with a gust, other times with the softest nudge from one place to the next.
Letting Go Lightly, With A Balinese Purification Ceremony
Yesterday, I attended a Balinese purification and blessing ceremony with Tri Desna in Ubud. While the full impact of letting go may take days, even weeks, today, I feel lighter. Rested. Unburdened. Even in the midst of a gap year—a time meant for freedom and exploration—I had unknowingly packed emotional baggage alongside my travel essentials. We all do.
Travel Diaries - Adult Gap Year, Week One
The first week of my adult gap year has arrived, and with it, a sense of liberation I never knew I needed. I sit quietly in a hotel, my entire life packed into a 3x3 box. Why do things hold such meaning for us? We save up, we buy, we collect, we part with them—yet in the end, isn’t it the people, the experiences, and the moments that define our true sense of home?
Finding Depth in Your Favourite Travel Memories
Travel is so much more than the destinations we reach—it’s about the emotions that arise, the connections we foster, and the way these experiences stay with us long after we’ve unpacked. When I think back on my most cherished journeys, I realise what makes a place truly unforgettable isn’t just the beauty of the landscapes or the moments captured on camera. It’s the deeper, more intangible essence—the way these places touch our hearts and awaken something within us.
What is an Adult Gap Year?
An adult gap year is a chance to step away from your day-to-day life and embrace everything you wished you'd done before university or entering the workforce—except now, you have the benefit of experience, wisdom, and (hopefully) some savings on your side.
New Years Resolutions Or Renewed Ways Of Thinking About Things
Three years ago, when our blogs were hosted someplace else, I wrote: Finding The Right Vocabulary To Make Your New Years Resolutions Attainable. It was a time when we were all in different places; many of us had no freedom, very little in the world of choices, and we were all a little gloomy. This year, ending 2024, feels hopeful, empowered and freer.
What Is The Meaning In A Raindrop?
When the rain drops from the sky it transforms the ground beneath it, if only for a moment, this temporary change is part of the cyclical nature of our world.
Moments of Clarity
You watch day by day thinking that these things you witness are normal, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, you see something in a new light and for the first time ever you realise that the conflict in your work life and the person you are can no longer coexist in the way that they have done for years.
Ross Farm, What Weekends Away Are Made For
Live in Melbourne? Love Design? Need a break from city living? I think Ross Farm might be the place for your next getaway.
Finding The Right Vocabulary To Make Your New Years Resolutions Attainable
Away with friends this year instead of the time old classic of going for drinks and dinner, watching the fireworks or any other habitual example you can think of. It’s not that I am above all of it this year, it’s just that I’m not sure what I would be celebrating, another year - with restrictive freedoms still likely being something we coexist with, it’s different somehow.
Natures Patterns
Have you ever thought about the patterns that we live amongst, the nature that surrounds us and the peace that can be found in the symmetry, the design and the truthfulness of it all?
Your Desired Change, Your Responsibility
It was Einstein that said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” I think we all tend to do this in some capacity. We wait for a change to happen, hoping someone or something will rescue us. We can seem powerless to take responsibility.
Communication, Lies & Labels: Unpacking the Stories That Shape Us
What is it to communicate, and do we do it honestly? Verbal is only 7% but it's how we learn, how we trust and how we talk. How much of the other 93% do we miss, ignore or filter out. Are we all listening wrong, should we be listening with our eyes, not our ears.
Melbourne Lockdown 5.0, It's Time
As Melbourne - the city in which I live goes into its fifth lockdown it forces us to once again take stock of our surroundings. If time is the only positive side effect of these lockdowns. What do you want to do with yours? Could time be a gift, an opportunity or is it simply a waste?
Why I Started To Blog?
The Why behind my Blog. Imagine longing to write every single day. That’s me, and the easiest thing for me to write about are my feelings, experiences and ideas. I do it to figure things out, to dissect an issue and find a solution or a lesson. Now I want to share to invoke conversations and new perspectives.