Sometimes Nourishment Is Subtraction
Sometimes the most nourishing path isn't about adding more. It's about creating a life that gently supports who you're becoming.
Creating a Life That Supports Your Nervous System
A few mornings ago, I was sitting in the sunshine in our newly opened-up dining room (yes, we knocked out two walls in the first two weeks), coffee in hand, listening to tūī calling from the trees outside.
The husband had already walked to work. Gizmo, our little Maltese-cross dog, was asleep nearby. Through the open windows, I could hear the distant hum of the city waking up across the river, and for the first time in a very long while, I realised I was content.
It was such a small, ordinary moment, and yet it felt significant because only a few weeks earlier, we had been in the middle of one of the biggest transitions of our lives.
This move was never about finding a different house — it was about creating a different life.
And perhaps that’s the heart of what I’ve been uncovering through this Nourishment series: sometimes nourishment isn’t about adding more. It’s about recognising when the life you’ve built, however meaningful it once was, is asking more of your nervous system than it can comfortably keep giving.
I think this is one of the hardest things to recognise in midlife, especially for women who are used to carrying a lot. We’re taught to look for solutions in what we can add — better routines, more support strategies, another practice, another system, another attempt to get on top of everything.
Sometimes those things help, and sometimes the real problem isn’t that we need a few more tools. It’s that parts of our life no longer fit the person we’ve become, and no amount of “self-care” can compensate for conditions that are quietly draining us day after day.
That doesn’t make those things wrong, or erase what they’ve meant. It simply means life evolves, and nourishment, if it is to remain nourishing, has to evolve with us.
When What Once Nourished You No Longer Does
The property we left behind was beautiful.
It held family history, memories, and a connection to the land that ran back through generations. It was where my husband and I built our life together, where I grew up, and where some of the most important chapters of my story unfolded.
I loved it, and part of me always will, but over time, something had shifted.
The practical demands of maintaining the property had gradually become heavier. The isolation that once felt peaceful had become limiting, and the amount of energy required simply to live there no longer matched the season of life I had moved into.
The place hadn’t changed — it just no longer fit who I am now.
And I suspect this is where so many of us get caught. We keep trying to make ourselves fit into lives, routines, roles, and environments that may once have suited us beautifully but no longer support the person we’ve become.
Comfort and Nourishment Are Not Always the Same Thing
This move has also made me realise that comfort and nourishment are not necessarily the same thing.
Comfort is familiar.
Nourishment helps us flourish.
Sometimes those two things overlap beautifully, and sometimes they drift apart so slowly that we barely notice.
There are places, routines, identities, relationships, and responsibilities that once fit us perfectly but eventually drain us because they no longer support who we are now.
One of the questions I’ve found myself asking repeatedly over the past year is this: Does this still support the life I’m trying to create?
It’s a different question from: Have I always loved this?
The first asks what nourishes us now, while the second asks what nourished us before. Both matter, but they don’t always give the same answer.
The Things I Didn’t Expect
When we first started talking about moving, I imagined I would miss the wide-open spaces the most, and in some ways I do.
What nourishes me now, in little moments across the day, are the smaller things. It’s the joy of walking almost everywhere without plowing through mud, the river track just a few minutes from home, and the little detour I like to take along the boardwalk through the mangroves.
It’s the tracks winding up through Parihaka, neighbours waving, and friends and family dropping in to deliver avocados or stop for lunch.
Hearing life around me without feeling engulfed by it gives me a sense of connectedness that I’d been missing.
There’s a phrase I’ve started using for this: ambient belonging.
It’s the feeling of being connected without obligation, of being part of a community without constantly having to participate.
As someone who is both highly sensitive and high sensation-seeking, I’ve realised that this balance matters. Too much stimulation and my nervous system becomes overloaded; too much isolation and something else begins to wither.
What nourishes me sits somewhere between the two.
Nourishment by Subtraction
Balance isn’t always about adding things — more routines, practices, strategies, and systems. More things that might finally help me feel on top of everything.
Those things can help settle me; however, ultimately, they can only do so much if the foundations beneath them don’t support the life I’m trying to create.
What this move has taught me is that sometimes the most powerful form of nourishment comes from removing what no longer fits.
For me, this meant reducing the amount of maintenance our property required, cutting back time spent driving everywhere, and reducing financial pressure.
It was about reducing the friction and the number of things competing for my attention and energy, not because those things are inherently bad, but because every demand placed upon us requires something in return.
Over time, those demands accumulate, and The Stack, as I've written about before, grows higher. Sometimes the answer isn’t adding another support strategy — it’s removing a few bricks from the stack, and ensuring that the foundations, the ground on which they stand, are firm.
Returning to the Roots
The more I’ve reflected on this move, the more I’ve realised that it’s not just about nourishment.
It’s been about roots.
For six months, I’ve been untangling roots that ran deep into family history, identity, memory, and place. Some of those roots remain, and they always will, as they’re part of my story, and the connection doesn’t simply disappear because life changes.
But roots aren’t only about where we’ve come from. They’re also what steady us, feed us, and allow us to keep growing.
A healthy tree doesn’t survive on old roots alone. It keeps sending them outward, reaching for water, stability, and the nutrients it needs to flourish, and I think we’re not so different.
There are times in life when the work is not only to honour the roots that shaped us, but to recognise when we need to extend new ones — to create environments, rhythms, relationships, and ways of living that support who we are now, not just who we’ve been.
That’s what this move has really been about for me.
Not abandoning the past, and not pretending those old roots didn’t matter, but taking what still nourishes me and planting it into a life that offers more space, more support, and more possibility for growth.
Building a Life That Embodies Balance
As this Nourishment series comes to an end, I find myself arriving back at the same place I always seem to return to.
Balance is not something we find — it’s something we create.
It’s not perfection, discipline, or getting everything right.
Balance comes through small, everyday choices that support the life we are trying to live. It’s the food we eat, the way we move and rest, and the people we spend time with.
It’s also in the environments we create, the demands we choose to carry, and the things we decide to let go of, whether that’s a stack of smaller things or a place, a role, or a person.
For me, this move was never really about changing where we lived. It was about becoming grounded in a life that embodies balance at this stage of my life.
And that feels like the perfect place to finish this Nourishment series, because next time we’ll return to the roots of A Balanced Life and begin exploring the foundation on which everything else grows.
Grounded.
Prefer to watch instead?
If you'd rather listen than read, I've recorded a short video sharing the reflections behind this week's post. Sometimes hearing a story in someone's own voice brings it to life in a different way.
Watch: Sometimes Nourishment Is Subtraction – Creating a Life That Supports Your Nervous System
Ready to explore what comes next?
This post brings the Nourishment series to a close, but it's also the beginning of something new.
After a short break over the New Zealand school holidays, we'll begin Grounded — a series exploring why life can feel harder than it seems to for some of us, what it means to live with a dual-wired nervous system, and how to create the conditions that help you flourish.
If you'd like those articles delivered straight to your inbox, I'd love to have you join me.
