Fully Expressed - Start Here

Holding you and me to a truer, braver expression

Feb 15, 2024

Hello, Welcome to Fully Expressed!

NOTE: This post is about my background and what drives me, if you want to know exactly what to expect as a reader and member click here instead.

I’m Sarina,

I am a Mother (it totally needs a capital M if you ask me), writer and artist.

I live in a little hippy town in Australia called Mullumbimby, but I grew up in inner city London, where my twenties were spent 24/7 in Louboutin or Prada heels, shopping at Selfridges far too often and eating the poshest nosh in Soho.

Those were my modelling days, full of lavish indulgence and an unsurprising dose of ‘are my thighs thin enough?’

Now, I’m a sucker for Birkenstocks and farmers’ markets and I devote my life to unearthing the beauty and brilliance inside me, while navigating the curveballs of Big Shadow Shit that comes with living more and more truthfully.

My Substack is a place where I hold you and me to a truer and braver expression of ourselves. This space isn’t for everyone, especially if:

You’re not on this earth to discover more of your magic
You favour saccharine over real talk
You’re offended by the occasional swear word

How I Want to Die

It took a while to land upon the name for this publication. And when it suddenly dropped in (while driving on the highway) it was like ‘Ummm… well obviously that’s it!’

Every single day I lean into more of me because Fully Expressed is how I want to die.

I want to die Fully Expressed because I lived my life unclenched; a beautiful mess with a steady knowing. I want a gentle smile on my face just before I take my last breath, I want to high five my soul on the way out, ‘Yep, we went there!’

This is what moves me more than anything.

I adore the words of meditation teacher Emily Fletcher: “There has never before been a You, and there never will be a You again, so if you don’t sing your song, it’ll never be sung.”

When I heard this it sent shivers down my spine, a gigantic wave of grief, relief and laughter, ‘I have no choice but to sing my song!’

So how can we hold ourselves to a fuller expression? I believe it’s quite simple:

To become the shameless animation of our unique Brilliance & Beauty

-The brilliance and beauty that actually, only we know intimately.

“There has never before been a You, and there never will be a You again, so if you don’t sing your song, it’ll never be sung.” Emily Fletcher

Cue the human paradox

There’s the gnosis of our innate brilliance and beauty, and at the same time, a gaping hole of self-doubt.

When I sit to write, every single time, I face the gaping hole.

And it’s strangely addictive, because each time I stay there, writing and writing despite the incessant ‘why am I even bothering?’ a certain magic will slowly emerge, something I didn’t quite expect or plan for, and therein something brilliant and beautiful is unearthed.

This is why, I believe, we must build resilience.

Each of us has an inner artist, whether we outwardly express it or not.

I meet so many women who tell me they would love to be more creative.

Creativity is our nature and our birthright, what stops us exploring creatively is the insidious voice that tells us we need to be ‘good’ at it, or that it’s a silly, frivolous idea to explore ourselves this way.

When I finally heeded the call to write, I knew I’d be facing some demons, but I knew I wouldn’t have to die unexpressed.

Our Full Expression is Not Always Big

…our full expression lives in the nuance and subtlety, it’s the tiny pivot we make toward something truer and braver.

And let’s not conflate being our full expression with how we show up online (yes, showing up online with a fuller expression is wonderfully gratifying, but if we’re ignoring how we show up offline, we’re missing the point).

When my partner moves in to lovingly touch me, instead of finding 4389 things I need to do instead, what is the full expression of receiving his touch? When my daughter plants kisses all over my face, what is the full expression of revealing my joy? When my heart is strung out and I’m in pain, what is the full expression of my grief?

At times of grief and pain, I fantasise about gathering with a bunch of women, digging a huge hole with our bare hands and roaring from the pit of our bellies into the earth. I’m pretty sure I’ll do this before I die. Wanna join?

Unshaming to Express More Fully

I wrote above that we can hold ourselves to a fuller expression by becoming the shameless animation of our unique Brilliance & Beauty, because shame is the cock-blocker of experiencing our own magic.

Probably just like you, shame has had a stranglehold on much of my expression.

Several years ago, instead of stuffing it down, ‘just getting on with life’ and trying to act more confident (inevitable fail) I decided to lean waayyyy in. I studied several modalities for somatic unshaming and focussed on steadying myself in resilience, feeling more radiantly alive and shamelessly belonging to myself.

Random fun facts:

I’m 80% introvert 20% extrovert
In Human Design I’m a 5/2 Emotional Projector
I laugh a lot and cry a lot, I feel a lot (my daughter inherited this and I love it about us)
If I won the lotto I’d make a documentary about the power of vaginas
My accent gets veh veh British after a margarita

More of My Writing Here on Substack

I had a WILD experience with this one, writing while accidentally high - I Wasn’t Meant to Write This and is most reflective of my inner world

Mother moved through me while I sat to pee and glanced past my daughter’s bedroom door. She was at daycare and I had a sudden overwhelming gratitude for her ‘waking me up’

The Aching to Be Seen arose from the healing of a deep chasm between my partner and I

In Women Are Designed to Lead Their Men (paid post) there’s intimate parts and provocative parts, it had been nudging me to write it for a long time.