Dr Zac Elizabeth Buchanan
Welcome to The Return - a place to learn deep rest, unravel old patterns, trust your intuition, and connect authentically with a community of women also treading the path home to themselves. Reflect on something new every Friday and be in the know about my upcoming offerings, including women's circles, workshop series and retreats.
Feeling fine one moment, then snapping the next?
Dear Reader, Have you ever felt like you were holding everything together just fine—managing the juggle, getting things done—only to find yourself completely overwhelmed or snapping over something tiny a moment later? When this happens, it's easy to fall into self-criticism and wonder why our patience or resilience suddenly disappeared. Following on from my reflection last week about the dance between striving and stillness, there is an important physiological reality underneath it all: our...
Striving vs Being: how do we find the balance?
Dear Reader, Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the balance between striving, improving, and growing—and presence, compassion, and care towards oneself. I’m coming to realise that perhaps there isn't a clear, correct delineation between the two. This balance shapes and shifts during different seasons of our lives, our cycles, or even within a single week. For me, the primary focus for the past few years has been to step back within myself. To nourish and care for myself, to make life more...
Gratitude for the people and moments that shaped us
Dear Reader, So much of the self-development world can get stuck in a loop of "fixing" or unearthing past patterns or experiences, that our minds almost instinctively turn towards the negatives when we're in that headspace. We focus on the things about ourselves that need to shift. We look back at our past—our childhood conditioning, the parenting we received, or the hurtful relationships we survived—and we focus on what we need to unlearn, overcome, and repair. And yes, that is important,...
What Jacinda Adern reminded me about feminine power
Dear Reader, I recently finished Jacinda Adern's memoir, A Different Kind of Power, and I've been sitting with a deep sense of resonance ever since I turned the last page. For a long time, the dominant narrative around women in leadership - perhaps best epitomised by the "Lean In" era (spurred on by Sheryl Sandberg) - was that to succeed, we had to adapt. We were encouraged to adopt more hyper-masculine traits: to be detached, faster, tougher, less emotional, and to fit ourselves into mould...
The double standards of rest
Dear Reader, I didn’t share this in my last newsletter, but almost immediately after stepping out of the airport coming home from our holiday, I came down with a virus. On the plane ride—and in the car on the way home—I had been mentally compiling a monumental to-do list. I was mapping out everything I needed to organise for the first week of the school term, alongside all the tasks I needed to check off for work. I was ready to hit the ground running. Instead, the virus hit me hard. It came...
School holidays, maternal guilt and lessons from the Daintree
Dear Reader, It has been two weeks since I last landed in your inbox. I’ve been away for one of those weeks, and my focus shifted entirely to my kids while they were on school holidays. If you've ever navigated the holiday shift, you know it isn't necessarily an easier time. For me, it required adapting to a completely different rhythm of life, accepting what cannot be controlled, and constantly reminding myself to be gentle with myself as stress levels—and sibling rivalry—inevitably...
Finding the balance (again) when everything feels too much.
Dear Reader, This week, I've found myself navigating a bumpy personal landscape. And it got me reflecting on the delicate, ongoing dance of carrying the weight of the world while still allowing ourselves to live fully within it. How do we notice the pain, suffering, and unfairness in the world without letting it completely dampen or strip away our permission to experience the joyful, frivolous, beautiful parts of life? And on the flip side, how do we avoid shutting that pain out so much that...
Your Personal Bill of Rights
Dear Reader, Last night, as we sat in circle for the third week of our current workshop series, the space felt raw and tender. There was a collective awakening as the group shared that they were beginning to truly notice and name the different parts of themselves. But sitting right alongside that awareness was a heavy exhaustion. We talked about how we are still stretching ourselves thin, and how hard it can feel to actually say "no" in the moments that matter most—blocked by a myriad of old...
Looking beyond the weather patterns of life
Dear Reader, A few weeks ago, I shared some thoughts about the heavy blueprints and external "shoulds" we carry—the rules and expectations that cloud our true voice and make us feel like we constantly need to ensure everyone around us is cared for and contained. Lately, I’ve been thinking about what happens when we choose to pause and look beneath all that noise. I’m a huge fan of analogies and the one that comes to mind is the ocean. On the surface, the waves can swish, churn, and chop. The...
A question for your weekend (and a tiny act of reclamation)
Dear Reader, My heart is feeling incredibly full today. Last night, we gathered for the very first evening of The Return 4-week immersion series. Sitting in a room with a group of women, hearing their stories, their challenges, and their wishes, was a profound reminder of a simple truth: the quest to find your authentic voice and reclaim what is true to you is a journey so many of us are walking. To witness the immediate warmth, encouragement, and love that filled the room was beautiful. It...
Welcome to The Return - a place to learn deep rest, unravel old patterns, trust your intuition, and connect authentically with a community of women also treading the path home to themselves. Reflect on something new every Friday and be in the know about my upcoming offerings, including women's circles, workshop series and retreats.