In This week’s dog-walk ramble episode I talk about celebration…not the champagne-clinking, prosecco-fuelled kind, but the quiet, personal kind we’ve never been taught to recognise. The kind that looks like noticing yourself rather than performing an achievement.

Big success? Claps, applause, gold star.
Small everyday survival? Nothing. Next. Move on. Do better.

We explore why so many of us ( hello straight-A girls, “do it perfectly or don’t bother,” high-functioning mothers, productivity-addicted humans shaped by achievement) only celebrate when there’s something measurable to show for it. Grades, promotions, milestones, awards, outcomes. Somewhere along the way, celebration became conditional, a reward we had to earn.

Which means most of our real lives - the becoming, the tending, the trying, the holding, the tiny shifts no one sees - go completely unacknowledged.

I talk about how time blurs into a long, relentless splurge when we don’t pause to mark it, and how weekly endings, small rituals, lunar moments and seasonal punctuation help us actually register that we exist and that we’re moving. Not achieving - moving. There’s a difference.

Because what if celebration isn’t for the final product?

What if it’s simply for being someone who is growing, composting, shifting, trying again, or just breathing through a day that asked a lot from you?

✨What would you honour if you didn’t have to earn it?

✨How would you celebrate yourself if celebration didn’t need confetti, permission, or proof?

✨What parts of your life are happening beneath the surface right now, quietly becoming, even if no one else can see them?

This episode is an invitation to stop waiting for a finish line. To stop outsourcing endings and applause. To give yourself punctuation. To mark your own becoming. To notice your own existence, not as something to justify, but as something worthy of witnessing.

Just a stop. pause. breathe.
A quiet, private “I’m here.”