After the words landed on the page i realised it was possible all of us may like to read a few of them. They were shared in the context that somehow, in our own unique ways, we are all juggling life. We all dance with how to live a life deeply connected to those we love while also balancing our contributions and purpose…….

“Spaciousness seems to be a common dance for the feminine, our empathic loving hearts yearn to be of service to all. It’s the hours in our human days that seem the challenge. In a conversation i once shared with a buddhist nun i told her that to me, she always felt like a lake of calm. Her response offered a giggle and a sense of hope for my own life. She said most days a part of her actually felt like a duck on that lake of calm. While on the surface she was serene and gracious, under the water her little legs were paddling full steam.”

More times than not my little legs are also paddling, diligently swimming and surrendering the best i can so i too may retain a sense of balance. I look out into the world and see amazing women that inspire me, that seem to have some super human power of ‘having it all together’, and i remind myself, its possible, just like me, that they too have days their little legs are frantically working to keep life afloat and in balance.

Each of us are doing our best. Lets slow the paddle and enjoy the lake of calm whenever the chance arises. Enjoy your week beautiful people.

With love and kindness from my heart, KMF xo

The post A little excerpt from a letter i wrote this week… i thought you might enjoy this story too. appeared first on Kate M Foster.

This past week i have been reflecting on the kindness of others. I have been inundated with snail mail, cooked meals, warm conversations, friendly smiles and my husband even returned home with some wildflowers. My life is immeasurably blessed. And these blessings got me reflecting on the moments that have impacted or changed my life the most. And every single one of these moments have been where others chose to bring kindness, to show up and share generously their time, words or service.

Blessing others has a funny way of rubbing off on all involved.

Its not every week I get inundated with external worldly blessings like i mentioned above. Life has many seasons. Regardless of how it looks, i rest in the beauty of my life, i love it entirely and i intend to share this joy with the whole world if they want it!

In the everyday rhythm of living i focus on what my mama taught me when i was little. If you want kindness, you have to bring it. (This applies to most things: Happiness, love, peace etc). We need to embody what we yearn for most. We need to be the person we wish was there for us. We need to share the kindness we may love to receive, offer the support we know buoys and nourishes our life.

Because in some strange way it doesn’t matter which way kindness is flowing, the simple fact is that when someone brings it, the likely hood is that ‘kindness’ will find a way to infect almost everyone nearby. Even if i witness random strangers being blessed by others, i feel warm and fuzzy and grateful.

Have a beautiful week brave hearts. Keep sharing what you yearn for most. Planetary happiness really does depend on each of us. Now more than ever its important to remember we are the ones we have been waiting for!! Get gifting your gifts! The time is now.

With love and kindness from my heart, xo.

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Check out my desk! It’s in the same room as the rest of my house! Yep, i write in my bedroom, the kids room, our kitchen, dining, lounge and everything else room. This is caravan living. Four of us in close confines. Mostly is amazing. Travel is amazing. Except when it’s not. Shitty days happen wherever you are on this planet. And in a caravan there is nowhere to hide.

It looks beautiful right now. See? That’s because it’s Monday morning and i’ve reclaimed some space for my very own. That’s my laptop, learning to use a mac has been nothing short of the richness! Slowly, steadily, as with most change we are making friends.

Can you see the purple meditation cushion, that’s the writing side of the table. See the other side, i slide around there when i need to edit things. The writing side is by far more comfortable for me. Life flows through me and I love the surprise of what comes out. The editing side is not as fun. Editing for me is a total brain melt. Shitty bits are part of every job, even the ones you entirely love. As for editing, we are at least looking at each other with the consideration of making friends. My editor is a saint. A miracle worker. I bow to her! I pray she goes no where any time soon!

This book is drawing closer to completion. I will be done at the end of the month. Pre-orders will begin in December because we all need some support and inspiration at the start of each new year, or in the least i know i do. Printing is a whole other world i know nothing about. Lucky I don’t have to manage everything! I believe it will be released in March, stay tuned.

Right now I am immersed in this labour of love. If you have a spare moment please send a little thought my way. When it arrives I will snuggle that energy close to my heart and in some way your kindness will flow out of me into the book.

Excited much.

Thankful beyond measure.

Scared? Of course! I’m showing up anyway.

Big love to each of you, please remember to be kind to you. You are precious in my world xo

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Look closely at this picture. It explains love. I was sad when I found my broken cup. Tea is a ritual in our home. I have treasured every tea I’ve had in it. I wasn’t ready to let it go. Almost defiantly I left the broken remnants on the bench to contemplate the next step…

I busied myself with cleaning and errands. Miss four interrupted asking for tape. I contemplated saying no as I was busy and it felt inconvenient yet I took a deep breath and rummaged through my Tetris caravan cupboards to find it. 10 or 15 minutes later I enquired what she was doing with the scissors and tape and with big joyful eyes she smiled and presented me with my cup. It’s all fixed mama. Bless her heart, it was completely sticky taped together. Even the gaping hole in the bottom had tape clumsily hanging over it.

The whole world opened to me in that moment and I remembered the truth of life.

Our innocents hearts are the same.

Eternally loving, infinitely giving, courageously vulnerable, showing up to perform the impossible.

May we all be blessed with innocent hearts.

Love and kindness ❤️KMF

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For countless years I searched for love, wanted to be loved, wanted to be cherished and all at the same time didn’t understand what vulnerability was required to actually become saturated with that juicy goodness.

The world in addition to the countless Disney movies I consumed taught me love was meant to feel good, if it didn’t feel good it wasn’t love. And love most definitely was an outside job. For love to be real it must come from someone or something outside my own shadow filled self. It must be profound, convenient and clearly labelled, these were the kinds of things that I believed made love real.

(For the record let me be clear here when i speak about love not always feeling good, I am in no way referring to any kind of violence. Violence, emotional, physical or any other kind is NEVER ok and absolutely NOT any part of love. It must not be tolerated, accepted or hidden. Ever. Ever.)

When I speak of the parts of love that don’t feel good what I am referring to is the willingness inside myself to move towards those aspects of myself I found and sometimes still find undesirable. You see it would have been highly convenient if the world or someone else could love those undesirable bits of me so i could feel good, accepted, valued, beautiful, enough. I wanted my worthiness to come from an external source.  An external person. An external thing. (Addiction lives here). And although sometimes love can be reflected back to us by something outside of ourselves, it is only ever a signpost back to the truth of what is already in existence inside of us. Love is an inside job, any other version rarely lasts long.

Some of my demands were for someone to love and cherish me the way I deserved. And the shit storm started there. Because when someone does love and support you so entirely and you still feel unworthy, you have the opportunity to turn and face the truth, to run or to suffer. There is no where else to hide. If every external demand you have made has been met and you are still not happy, its time to face the music. The internal music. The song that never ends.

That’s what i call the hot seat. This hot seat is the invitation you have been waiting for your whole life. It’s your deepest yearning to get real and honest and messy so you can make friends with your own internal chaos. But more about that in my upcoming book.

What I can share with you now is this.

By turning towards all that petrified me about myself, by finding the courage to sit and make friends with my yucky icky undesirable shame filled bits, this divine man appeared in my life. And when he appeared I turned towards myself, and him.

He showed up and I let him in. In doing so I stood far beyond any confines of comfort I had ever known in my life. It hasn’t changed.

I vulnerably love with all my being and at the same time i know it is 100 percent guaranteed one of us will leave the other. That happens to everyone we know and love. We leave each other. We all eventually have to farewell this life. Our time is finite.

So when he pulls over in the car and wanders off into a paddock I wait. I sit, I weave and reflect. And when he appears back at the side of the car with these in his hands love leaks out my eyes. I see him. I love. I let that love in. It breaks me. And in my sacred brokenness my light floods out and touches the world.

My heart is willing to make friends with my sharp corners and from there I can be that big warm hug the world is desperate for.

I show up,

In love and service,

K xoxo

The post Letting Love In… appeared first on Kate M Foster.

My message is this:

Show up.

Be kind to yourself.

Be kind to others.

Its that simple.

Remember life is not as complicated as we pretend it to be.

The post The simple Truth. appeared first on Kate M Foster.

It was a chapter where my girlfriends were everything. They were my support, my inspiration, my confidantes and my encouragement. They challenged me to grow beyond my awareness and abilities. They laughed with me. Cried with me. They lived the questions of life alongside my growing fragile heart. We traded stories and tears and food and dreams. We imagined what was to come and invested heart-fulls of possibility into how we thought the future would unfold for each of us. Those days were precious and at the time I thought they would go on for ever.

The thing is, they didn’t.

Fast forward a decade or so and life is very different. Life has been richer and more colourful than I ever imagined possible. This sacred sisterhood helped me navigate my teens, twenties, thirties, marriages, divorce, separation, children, loss and losing loved ones to suicide. We have each had to say goodbye to precious people way too soon. Our hearts have broken and mended more times than I can count. We have fallen and risen and fallen again.

For the most part those of us still living check in as often as we can. We balance our own families and extended families and partners families and friends and children and careers and volunteer jobs and homes and gardens and communities all while doing our best to stay connected to our own hearts and the dreams we planted in them long ago.

Truthfully, life continues to get better. And by better I mean more fulfilling and beautiful. At the same time my responsibilities have increased many times over. I have so many people to consider with every decision I make its taken me years to remember I actually have permission to consider me too.

This dance, this rich, fulfilling everything I ever dreamt of responsibility dance fills every moment of my day. I am fulfilled. I am stretched. I am thankful and content.

I still have the same number of moments in each day, yet the smorgasbord of options to share those moments with has expanded exponentially.

So, sitting here, glancing you three across the room melted my heart. The beauty of the chapter you are living made my eyes leak. And the beauty of this chapter I am living does the same.

Sometimes I watch my mum and her girlfriends. They have entered a chapter I am yet to arrive in and know very little about. I notice how they are always laughing and I wonder if I’ve become a bit too serious. I remember how in an earlier chapter of my life, exploring with my girlfriends, I was so quick to laugh. If I’m truthful that chapter of deep exploration also contained a bathtub of tears too. And while this current chapter of life is ever so constant, and we don’t see each other as much as we used too, we each do our best to carve out sacred time to share together. And dreaming forward as our little ones grow I’ve got to wondering if a version of that spacious life will come again? I’d love another chapter with my precious girlfriends where we have freedom to plan road trips and festivals and adventures. One where we can reminisce about the previous chapter of our life that was full of little children, unending juggling and responsibilities, yet somehow deeply sacred while it swallowed every waking moment.

So whatever chapter you find yourself in, may you be blessed. May you have the support and encouragement and the belief of other women. And even if you stand alone may you remember there are countless women behind you, me included. We are trusting you. Believing for you. Encouraging you and counting on you to show up brave and real.

Be blessed my dears,
All love ❤️
Bless you three beauties, please write to me if you ever read this xoxo

And Thank you, AGAIN, with all my heart.

(The Vegie Bar, Brunswick Street, Fitzroy Victoria).

The post A window through time… appeared first on Kate M Foster.

It was hard because alongside their accusations I had my own ‘what is the meaning of life thing’ going on. To be honest I can’t remember a time I wasn’t asking myself who I was? Questioning what this whole shebang of a life is about. What is the meaning of it all? And what is my place in it? And how do I serve the world without rocking the boat and being judged?

Mostly the common line of accusations and questions from the kids perplexed me because:
a) I knew part of me was whatever God was, so of course I was special.
b) They too were made of this same sacred source, them and I were entirely the same and I had no sense of feeling ‘more than’ or ‘ better than’ any of them.
And
c) When I would speak up about this sacred equality the rebuke of ‘listen to how you sound’ or ‘sure, you just walk like you’re better than the rest of us’ and similar would fly back at me.

Regardless of my efforts I could never convey the sense of sacred equality I felt with the whole world, at least not in a way they could understand.

So I started writing. I wrote to that divine source I didn’t entirely understand. And I listened for answers.

And I set about the business of playing it small. Not speaking up. If the mere presence of my voice, something I had no control over the sound of, was making people feel inferior then I better shut up. Keep quiet. Not stand out.

And this worked for a while.

Hiding does.

Yet hiding is never a permanent fix. It only works until life’s patience runs out.
Some of life’s plans for me were relentless spiritual seeking and study, reflection and even deeper questioning. I started 10 day silent retreats when I was 20. And for the first time I really understood that silence and being alone was my medicine. Gee maybe it’s even the worlds medicine.

Over the years Ive remembered many things about the truth of life and of course I’ve made peace with living in my own skin.

My voice, I’m so thankful for it. It’s one of the ways I share with the world. My walk, it’s taken me all over this precious earth, and in each place I’ve visited, I’ve shared kindness and love while serving and benefiting others.

Sometimes the remnants of these childhood experiences still guide me to new insights.
As I draw closer to 40 and step into a deeper role of teaching and serving the world I’ve been reflecting on what’s changing within my awareness.

When I look at the world I still see fragments of the divine. Each person a manifestation of truth. However I’m understanding more and more how we are all in different stages of remembering. So while we may all be equal, we all don’t know this to be true.

And this is why I teach. This is why I create sacred space and offer workshops and retreats. Why I share my heart daily. Why I show up vulnerable and real and write and speak.

Because my life purpose is to embody truth and share that with everyone, reflecting wakefulness through each phase and season of life.

Yes it takes courage for to be seen. To be heard. Yet I believe all beings are destined for liberation, me included and so my commitment is to be in service of all.

My invitation to the world is this. Draw near. You have full permission to remember. Come, I offer you all that I am. Share with me. Travel alongside me. Take what you wish from my offerings and leave the rest. All you need do is take the next natural step. And in return for your courage I dedicate and offer my entire existence to serving all beings, for this life and all future lifetimes if they come about. I am unwavering in my dedication.

This I know to be truth.

So whenever you are ready, I’m here.

See you on the road my friend ❤️

The post This I know to be Truth. appeared first on Kate M Foster.

Is it hard? Of course, all families are hard sometimes.

Do we agree on everything? No way, what family does?

Do we all show up when we are tired and grumpy and out of our depths? Yep. That’s courage, we couldn’t live without it.

Do we get scared? Overwhelmed? Feel out of our comfort zone? Absolutely, all of us, regularly.

You see blended families contain humans. And like all other humans on the planet we are fragile creatures. We each carry our own histories of hurts and heart breaks and dreams. All of us, without exception desire happiness and peace. And all of us would love to avoid sadness and suffering.

Do we manage happiness and peace all of the time. Of course not, and I’m not sure it would be helpful anyway. You see it is the seasons that bring change and growth and transformation. It’s the seasons that steal our leaves and scatter them at our feet. They strip our branches and then by some act of grace, when we’ve finally got to a place of acceptance on how our life really is now, that same fierce grace thrusts new blossoms upon branches, highlighting our vulnerability once again.

Regardless of how uncomfortable the seasons make us or what thoughts we have about their presence in our lives, we need them. They give us life. The seasons serve us. Support us. Encourage us. Guide us.

You see a raw diamond is nothing special. We may not even notice it. For diamonds require polishing. Lots of polishing. They are slow to submit yet once cut are profound reflectors of light and beauty.

Families are diamonds. Multi faceted diamonds.

To think we can have the light without the polishing is insanity.

Each family comes with unique challenges and blessings, so of course each family will require different tools and polishing.

For our family, communication has been the master polisher. Lots of it. More than is comfortable. Communication married to willing vulnerable hearts, clear far sighted intentions, life long motivations to support and benefit our child, and grace. Truckloads of grace.

You see communication creates trust. I’ve even heard it said that the definition of trust is communication. And with this definition, trust is never permanently lost, regardless of what has happened. Life asks from us a deep commitment to communicate, and when things are hard, to show up and communicate again. Supporting our family means regularly checking in with our far reaching intentions, communicating more than we find convenient and having courage to rebuild trust and connection in the hard times.

In families we are often very quick to jump to conclusions or judge others. We form ideas and interpretations of what things mean and can forget that first and foremost true communication begins with ourselves. Communication involves deep inner honesty and truth telling. True communication demands we show up and do our inner work. How can we ever be pillars of strength and trust and truth for anyone else if we have not made space to listen and honour our own hearts?

The most helpful and supportive learnings I’ve ever had for connecting and understanding myself and others is NVC. Nonviolent communication (or compassionate communication as it is also known) has become the foundation I’ve rebuilt my life around. When I was at a critical time of upheaval and change, in the early years of becoming a blended family, NVC, by some act of grace appeared in my life. Maybe reading this is the gentle nudge or invitation you’ve been waiting for? Maybe your way is different? Honour your guidance.

If you are interested I encourage you to google NVC. You will find countless free YouTube clips by its founder Marshall Rosenberg. There are books, teachings, retreats and more accessible all over the world. I rarely recommend teachers to others however I would not hesitate in recommending Shari Elle, a world renowned trainer I have studied with who is based in Sydney Australia. She runs regular foundation trainings all over the country. A two day time investment will change your life.

So whatever season you find yourself in right now and regardless of how your garden looks, I encourage you to take heart. To turn towards the insurmountable hills. To brave up and take time to get honest with the deepest parts of yourself.

And I assure you that with an open, willing and vulnerable heart, a dedication to learning and courage to move towards that which scares you, grace WILL find a way to move in your life.

Your diamond is being cut and polished, it is growing more luminous as you come to trust in the ever changing seasons of your own heart and life.

Take care my friend, we are not so different you and I.

Love and kindness
K xo

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It’s true, my gifts are not better than anyone else’s, and measuring myself against any other human is never going to end well. There are millions if not billions of people with greater insight, grace, compassion, wisdom, workshops, books, the list goes on.
Maybe I am foolish for baring my heart each day, unleashing my fragile revelations into the ethers to be carved up by the masses. God knows I am judged, hell I even judge myself.

The truth is this, I do have a choice. I can silence myself, spiral inwards and downwards and turn against myself….   Or I can choose to show up vulnerable, to keep getting my brave on, to continue nakedly and foolishly offering what I have each moment as the most precious gift I can share. I call it ‘showing up anyway’. Its me, raw and real and often inadequately messy yet so holy divinely devoted to serve with every cell of my being.

So don’t come to me seeking perfection. Don’t expect infallible wisdom. Rather come with all of your vulnerabilities, your questions, your willingness, your fragile messy hearts and together we can explore and remember that which we never truly forgot in the first place.

No one has life sorted all the time. We are not meant to. We are the seasons and our only job is to not turn from whatever weather we find ourselves in.

Tonight I face the winds of change. I know not what they bring. I’m showing up anyway. Fragile, uncertain, scared, doubtful, real, willing, dedicated and brave. You see a queen wears her crown regardless of weather and I’ve got that damn thing on, shiny, wobbly, visible.

I look forward to seeing you out there fellow traveller, I need you, your brave heart inspires me, it encourages me onwards. Together we’ve got this ❤️ xox

June Sunshine Coast Workshop details coming soon…

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