Weathering The Storm

The storm didn’t pass so much as it reshaped the shoreline. After a year of illness, grief, and constant change, I'm back and I'm opening the Reverse Reset Restore door gently. Choosing a different way to build: slower, kinder, and far more honest. Instead of pushing for weekly output, I'm guiding the next ten episodes with one word for the year and nine subwords—an anchor for anyone tired of chasing progress without presence.

In this episode, our first for 2026, I talk candidly about why the hiatus happened and how it clarified my purpose: connection over visibility, healing over hustle, and craft over constant production. You’ll hear what it means to create within real limits, to let resilience be quiet rather than performative, and to honour the seasons where life unravels plans you thought were certain. Along the way we lean on words that hold steady—Murakami’s reminder that storms change us, and Tolkien’s insistence that beauty persists even beside grief. Expect slower releases every two to three weeks for Reverse Reset Restore allowing space for reflection. 

Our Foundation Fridays episodes return this year with a new shape: six books across the year so ideas have time to land. We begin with The Myth Of Normal by Gabor and Daniel Maté, then move through to Be Good To Yourself, Brave New World, The Kindness Method, The Gifts Of Imperfection, and Radical Acceptance. Each book becomes a doorway into self-compassion, responsible change, and freedom from the quiet norms that keep us unwell. Read with us in the Foundation Friday Facebook group and come check out the bi-monthly episodes, still the last Friday of the month, for our discussions and takeaways from each of our 6 books. 

If you’ve felt behind, broken, or stuck inside your own storm, this is a soft return and a steady hand. Walk with us as we trade urgency for depth, productivity myths for humane rhythms, and isolation for community. 

The final quote for this episode is from the epic story, The Lord of the Rings and the wonderful writing mind of J.R.R. Tolkien. It brings me peace when, in a world, both my own little one and the greater one we all live in, feels far removed from the light. 

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

Please subscribe, share with a friend who needs gentleness, and leave a review to help others find a slower path through their own weather.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose
• 0:58 A Hard Year Unpacked
• 2:42 Storms, Grief, And Resilience
• 5:10 Returning With Intention
• 6:16 Depth Over Output
• 8:17 Foundation Fridays Reimagined
• 10:45 Six Books For Slow Growth
• 12:14 Community And Gentle Stretch

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

This is Reverse Reset Restore. My name is Sally and in this podcast, we look at ways you can reverse your false beliefs, reset your relationship with yourself, and restore your physical and mental health and well-being. Change comes from Witnet. My name is Sally, and if you are joining me for the first time, a huge welcome and thank you for being here. I hope that you take some time to look at some of our previous episodes and stick around for all of the new ones here to come. And if you've been here before, oh my gosh, thank you so much for coming back. I know it's been like forever, right? I missed you. 2025 turned out to be a bit of a wash for me in terms of this podcast. Life, that relentless, complicated, beautiful thing, got in the way. And honestly, I just didn't have the mental or physical bandwidth to give what I really needed to give to reverse reset restore. Not to make excuses, but just to set the scene a little bit as to why I've had such a prolonged absence. There's a lot of reasons. I started a new job that required a huge amount of learning in a very short time frame along with international travel. I've unfortunately had some continuing health issues, including a chronic pain flare-up, an injury that's impacted me physically. There's just been lots of stuff going on for me physically. There was also a death of a beloved family member for me mid-year, and I've had other family members facing serious illnesses. Plus, I had to move house and not to even mention the diabolical state of the world. So yeah, there's been a lot of stress, a lot of pain, and I feel like I'm in one of those seasons of life where I'm in the middle of a storm. And perhaps you can relate. And that's what life seems to be about sometimes, right? A series of storms that sweep in and turn everything upside down and occasionally leave destruction in their wake. Haruki Mirakami wrote in Kafka on the shore. And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about. The reason I'm sharing that with you is because I still feel very much that I'm battling a storm. My health is still a mess. As I'm recording this, I'm two weeks into a chest infection brought about from probably most of it from stress. I think I had some exposure to mole, cleaning our old dilapidated house that we were moving out of. Just things were going on. So my health is still a mess. We've had to move again. And I still have so much to learn as I step into the next phase of my job. And none of this, none of 2025 feels neat or resolved. There isn't a tidy, and then everything was better ending here. But what I am carrying into 2026 is the quiet knowing that I had weathered many storms before, and I've survived every single one of them. Even when the healing hasn't happened in the way I hoped it would or in the time frame I expected, I'm still reminded that this life, as complicated and as painful and as frustrating as it can be, it's still a beautiful gift. And if we can remember that creation often comes from destruction, that something new can grow from what's been undone, then perhaps the storms become a little more bearable. Not easier, not even welcome, but I guess survivable. And as John Lennon said, life is what happens while you're making other plans, or maybe I'm paraphrasing that slightly, but you get the point. Because life is what happens while we have good intentions or thoughts in place of where we want to go or what we want to do or how I'm gonna achieve certain things. And even in my absence, there was a steady longing to return here. This podcast has never really left me. It stayed in my heart, in my thoughts. Just quietly waiting. I always knew I wanted to come back. I just didn't know how to do it in a way that was actually sustainable for me, given all of the chaos that my life was in during 2025, and probably will remain them in 2026 and beyond. And there's been sort of pressure because most of the advice that you read about and you listen to about podcasting focuses on output, more episodes, more content, more visibility. And if my only goal was growth, for growth's sake, then my entire life outside of work would need to revolve around constant production. And I just can't manage that at this point in my life. Of course, I would love this podcast to reach more people. I believe deeply in the value of what's shared here. And I know that it resonates with those who find it. But recognition was never the heart of why this podcast began. I felt called to it. This space was always meant to be about connection, about sharing lived experience, the insights, the joy, the grief, the confusion, the abject fury and rage that I feel sometimes. It was about speaking gently into the darkness of someone else's pain and reminding them that they are not alone. That I am not alone. That you are not alone. It's about making room for healing, for honesty, for falling madly in love with the one person we often neglect the most, ourselves. As a recovering paper pleaser, the months where I didn't create or in publishing anything or even really do any interactions on the social medias really did weigh heavily on me. And I carried a lot of guilt. And I still do at times. Learning how to show up for you while also showing up for myself, especially when you're in the middle of the storm, is something I'm still learning, I'm still practicing imperfectly, but intentionally. And at the end of last year, I sat down and made a plan that allowed space for both. And that plan was guided by my word for the year for 2026, which is exactly where the next episode begins. I've spoken about choosing a word for the year rather than setting rigid resolutions. And I've linked to that episode in the description. It lays the groundwork for what's coming next. The first ten episodes of this year will center around that one word, my word for the year, and the nine subwords I've attached to it. We're gonna slow things down this year. We're gonna take our time, prioritizing depth over urgency, presence, overpressure. So instead of trying to have a weekly episode, they may be every two to three weeks. I'm going to give some space between episodes for us to really take our time. And I'll talk about this more in the next episode as well, because it relates directly to my word for the year. This intention also flows into Foundation Fridays, which is our book club for the soul. So traditionally, every month on the last Friday of the month, I've released a Foundational Friday review of a book that has challenged me and changed me or rearranged me. This year I've decided to do things a little bit different and there's a little bit more focus. We're actually gonna look at just six books for 2026. That's one book every two months, basically. So these six books guiding these conversations are The Myth Normal by Gabor and Daniel Mate, Be Good to Yourself by Orison Swetmaden, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Kindness Method by Shiru Azadi, The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown, and we'll cap out the year with radical acceptance by Tara Brack. Each of these books offers a different doorway into awareness, responsibility, compassion, and freedom. And we'll move through them slowly. If you've been on any of our social media accounts like Instagram or Facebook groups, you'll see that we'll be beginning with the myth of Noel, which feels like the most honest place to start. It's inviting us in to question the patterns that we've accepted as just the way things are, even when they may be quietly harming us. This book has already begun reshaping my relationship with myself and the world. And I'm really looking forward to unpacking that with you. If you'd like to walk through these books with me, alongside me, you're warmly invited to join our Facebook group, Foundation Friday. And if it feels right, you can follow or subscribe to stay connected to Reverse Resetness Door via our social media pages and across to your favorite podcast platform. One personal stretch I've set for myself this year is to include more video content, which I know sounds ironic since this is an audio content. But I'm still recovering from my chest infection, and I haven't set up my studio yet to do recordings in our new house. But there will be something that comes along surely. And it's a stretch for me because it's uncomfortable. Truly. But I'm trusting that the discomfort might open new conversations and a deeper connection. So once that happens, you can check out our reverse reset restore YouTube channel. We do have actually some videos on there already, and you can watch or listen to all of our upcoming episodes. This episode is simply a welcome back, a soft landing, a hey, it's good to see you again. The next episode drops straight after this one, and it's where I'll introduce my word for the year and how you might explore your own alongside it. I'll finish, as I always do, with a quote, one that has carried me through some of the bleakest moments of the past year. It comes from Tolkien from the Fellowship of the Ring. And yes, I am a full Tolkien, one of the Rang's nerd as well. And it says, The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places. But still, there is much that is fair. And though in all land love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.