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“If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
— Ricky Bobby, unofficial philosopher of my childhood home.It’s a ridiculous line.Untrue in racing.But weirdly accurate in life. Not because you have to win, but because most of us are stuck waiting to start.Waiting to be invited.
Waiting for the apology.
Waiting to feel ready.
Waiting for someone else to go first.And while we’re all politely waiting…
nothing moves.⸻Every Christmas Eve at 6am, I drag my family to the Sydney fish markets along with 100,000 other largely uncaffeinated humans.My rule is we all say “Merry Christmas” to every single person we pass.My kids hate it.
Deeply offended by joy.
(Let’s be honest, the bacon and egg rolls are the only reason they show up.)⸻At first we get:awkward silences,
muted responses
confusion...then someone lights up,
smiles,
says it back loudly.And the whole energy shifts.Even my kids start laughing and get louder.⸻Turns out most people are just waiting for someone else to break the seal.⸻So why do we wait?My friend Ben Kiker calls it the ITG:
The Insane Thought GeneratorThe voice that says:“People will think I’m crazy.”
“Someone’s already doing this better.”
“I’m not ready.”⸻There are no rules...we don't have to be a certain age
we don't have to be original,
we don't have to look or dress a certain way to add value to the world.⸻I’ve spent years learning to call BS on that voice.All we have to do is keep trying to show up as the best version of ourselves.⸻My boss does it.First day on the job, he had already paid for my coffee before I got to my usual coffee shop.Such a small thing.
But it changed the tone of my entire morning.
Which made me kinder to my team.
Which rippled out further.Energy doesn’t disappear.
It just transforms.And in an ideal world, it transforms from negative to positive.That’s all it takes.
Someone goes first.⸻I should mention we’ve now entered a low-key war where we each try to pay for the other’s coffee first.
I am letting him win.
The benefits keep rolling in.⸻My son taught me this too.I pushed him (okay, forced him) to work behind the bar at our local pub when he was shy and uncertain.Five shifts in, he was holding eye contact and making strangers feel at home.Two years later he was behind my café coffee machine calling the regulars “dahling” in his Aussie accent and teaching me things about hospitality I genuinely needed to know.⸻His confidence didn’t arrive like a divine download.
It was built through:* repetition
* exposure
* and a healthy dose of discomfort⸻I used to think belief came first.
That I had to feel confident before I could act confident.
That I had to feel ready before I could start.⸻Wrong.More often than not, it’s the other way around.
You act.
Then you become.⸻A lot of us are waiting.Waiting for others to smile first, apologise first, create the energy we want back.Waiting for ourselves to:* get through the holidays
* make more money
* lose the ten pounds
* find the timeMeanwhile,
nothing shifts.⸻So maybe Ricky Bobby was onto something.Not about winning.But about not sitting around waiting for life to make the first move.⸻The shift doesn’t happen when everything lines up perfectly.
It happens the moment you decide to act.⸻The life you want isn’t waiting for you to be ready.
It’s waiting for you to go first.⸻P.S.
I don’t have this all figured out.I’m just someone tired of waiting to start, so I decided to write about it and see what happens.And if you spot a slightly unhinged woman at the Sydney fish markets shouting Merry Christmas at strangers…come say hi.Go on.
You go first.xx Heather

Actual fishmarket humans...

I want to know why Wednesdays get such a bad rap.I get it. It’s the middle of the week, the weekend feels far away and — assuming you work Monday to Friday — you’ve knocked out two days with three still to go. Radio DJs crack jokes, Spotify has playlists to “get you over the hump,” and (at least in my 20s) Thursday always seemed like the better night to go out.For me, Wednesday is my longest workday — a double cook and a late finish. So why, exactly, is it my absolute favourite day of the week? Why, after years of dreading hump day and hanging out for the weekend, have I completely flipped?Here we go.
· · ·
Every week, I cook a couple of hundred meals for our community at an event called Wednesday Night Lights. When they first asked me to add the Wednesday night shift to my schedule, I was hesitant. I liked my daytime hours and wasn’t keen to be working evenings again. But then I found out there was a free yoga class at 7pm on Wednesdays, and I thought — what the hell, I’ll combine work with my other passion. Win-win.Little did I know.Wednesdays are now by far the best part of my week. WNL is not a soup kitchen. It’s something much bigger than that. I come in, look at what the trucks have brought in from our rescue partners, and build a menu from scratch. My superstar volunteers help me prep and cook; another team serves and cleans up. It is largely organised chaos — very on brand for me.I never know what we’ll have, how many people are coming, whether our thousand-year-old building will lose power, or what the weather will do (did I mention it’s usually outside?).Occasionally our CEO pops into the kitchen to mention, casually, that she’s invited the GWS Giants, so there might be an extra fifty people. All part of the fun.The interesting thing? It’s almost never stressful.I put that down to trust — trust that there is always enough time, enough food, enough volunteers.Over two decades of cooking and living, I’ve finally understood something: operating from a place of lack, from the belief that something isn’t good enough or that I don’t have enough, doesn’t change my circumstances one bit.All it does is make me feel less than. The power still goes out. The car still breaks down on a tight month. The friend, the child, the partner still needs support that disrupts the schedule.Occasionally it’s bigger than that — a house burns down (twice). A parent dies without warning. But at Wednesday work, none of that takes over. There is just the food, and the people, and the moment.
· · ·
On Wednesdays, I spend the day in my favourite place — a kitchen — with people who are there simply because they want to be. And I get paid for it.On Wednesdays, a football team comes in and chats and laughs with us, hoisting grinning kids up onto their shoulders.On Wednesdays, someone walks up to me and says, “Thank you for the meal. Coming here is the highlight of my week.”On Wednesdays, my husband joins me for dinner at a table full of strangers who quickly become friends.On Wednesdays, I lie down on a yoga mat after a long day and thank my body for showing up, my husband for showing up, and my yoga teacher Yen for the community she’s quietly building.On Wednesdays, a Fijian band strikes up and half the room joins an impromptu conga line — prompting one of the footballers to lean over and ask me: “Is your job always this fun?”Yes. It is.Because I am lucky enough to do something I love, with people who love and support me — and the ideas and action I want to see in the world. The older I get, the more convinced I am that community isn’t a nice extra. It’s the whole game.
· · ·
I remember meeting M. Scott Peck at my church in New York City more than thirty years ago. Peck believed communities move through predictable stages: surface politeness, conflict, letting go of agendas, and finally genuine connection.Looking around WNL, I often think we’re seeing that last stage emerge.
If my Wednesdays are any indication, our world is moving out of stage two — chaos — and into stage three. We are on our way to stage 4… building something with a capital C: Community. A world of genuine connection, deep respect, authentic communication, health and meaning.Isn’t that the dream? I’d even stretch it to its spiritual limit — isn’t that what “heaven on earth” actually means? Not a place you go after you die, but a meaningful experience lived out daily in connection with every other human, creature, and living thing.The internet has made connection on a global — even galactic — scale a real possibility. Do I know for certain this leads somewhere good, rather than the AI doomsday some are predicting? No. But it doesn’t matter, because I have faith that it does. And I see the evidence every Wednesday.I see it in the faces around my table — eating, talking, listening to music. In the kids racing between chairs. In the laughter of my co-workers at the latest antics of the dogs circling WNL looking for scraps. In the breath I exhale when I finally lie down on that yoga mat at the end of a long day.If Wednesday is hump day because it’s long, and it’s hard, and it sits right in the middle of everything — then I am going to climb that hump with every ounce of joy I have.Because the view from the top? Pretty bloody fantastic.Come see me some Wednesday at Addi Road!xx Heather

Actual WNL humans...

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I am four feet tall with two blonde ponytails, standing in a white-painted cement-brick 1970s classroom, hand on heart, staring at the American flag in its little steel bracket waving quietly over a chalk-smeared blackboard that isn’t black, but green.“I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America. And to the republic, for which it stands, one nation…”
Let me say that again. _ONE nation. Not 50 states. Not 6 races. Not 5 ethnic groups. Not 25 religions.One. Nation.Well, I have one question — and no, it’s not “WTF happened?”Watching politics become increasingly divisive in both America and Australia, it feels like we’re broken from the top down. People are sad and disheartened with government they did (or didn’t) choose.But I think I might just have the answer.My parents have both told me, at different times, that they don’t think I should have a US vote since I don’t live there anymore. (I disagree, but that’s a whole other article.) I say, _“Honey, you can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl.” I have a voice and a vote, and I’ll use them. But I also know that no matter who ends up in office, I am not going to sit around waiting for the change I want to see in the world to come from the top.You guys know I love the podcast Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett — I listen all the time. The other day a guest was talking about leadership, and Steven asked him words to the effect “How does anything actually change, if not through leaders?”_The next line made me stop the car to write it down.The guest — Graham Hancock (no relation!) — answered:_“One person at a time, slowly, through word of mouth, through experience.”That’s it. That’s exactly what I’ve learned in this second half of life. Change doesn’t come from the top. It comes from the person sitting across the table from us. From how we treat our neighbours. From knowing that we are many people and many cultures — but we are one nation, and further than that even, we are one people, one world.The Fourth of July means a lot of different things to different people. In my memories, it’s beach days of foot-burning hot sand followed by the inevitable sunburn and sunset bonfires, finger-threatening Black Cat cherry-bombs, BBQ (pork only — I’m from Georgia) and, the only day of the year I’ll eat them, hot dogs. For others, it might not be so positive.I have a -LOT- of Fourth of July recipes, all of them bringing back memories of various years, family members and friendship groups. There’s Jen’s fave haddock-fry in Hudson, NY at the drive-in; flag-studded brownies at the Bridgers’ home; the Reddick apple pie (which makes an appearance at every American holiday in Sydney); Sandi’s Texas Rocky Road Sheet Cake; Cary's wild rice salad, Richard’s ribs on the Big Green Egg; America-ritas (made too many times with Lauri in DC and Georgia down the Jersey Shore); Dora Lee’s Oreo cookie dessert; and Anne’s spinach dip — the taste of coming home from college for the summer.

When my kids were little, there were red, white and blue cupcakes made by all the cousins, followed by a cutthroat game of 31 or Spoons with all 17 family members at once. There are the frozen daiquiris — a welcome relief from the 100-degree heat — sipped standing next to the BBQ with Daddy. There are coolers of fresh snapper, shrimp pulled straight from the Gulf behind Dr. Bill’s trawler, and bushels of oysters shucked standing on the splinters of a hot wooden pier.The recipe I’m sharing today comes to me by way of Cyprus. It’s a fabulously tasty cold salad. I learned it in Sydney working on a cookbook (shout out to G, Joss and Bree), and I’ve served it at many an American Fourth of July celebration. It doesn’t get much more multicultural than that — exactly like Australia and America: great dishes made from what was already there, combined with what came later, adjusted and tweaked, seasoned and turned into something bloody delicious._This is what a nation shaped by Indigenous roots and generations of newcomers tastes like.
You can’t legislate it. You can cook it.So go ahead, make a plate of this Cypriot Salad. It’s delicious. Take it to your celebration. Share the recipe, and the story. And remember that heaven on earth isn’t a leadership policy — it’s a table with enough chairs, and enough food, for everyone.We’re gonna get there, people.
· · ·

Cypriot Salad – BIG Version for a Party!Serves 20 · Vegetarian (vegan without the yogurt dressing) - this is DOUBLE what I make in the video!Salad• 500g freekeh or barley
• 375g French-style du Puy lentils (or sub brown lentils)
• 75g (5 Tbsp) pumpkin seeds / pepitas
• 60g (5 Tbsp) slivered almonds
• 75g (5 Tbsp) pine nuts
• 200g (1.5 bunches) fresh coriander (cilantro), chopped
• 100g (1.5 bunches) fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 400g (1.5 medium) red onions, finely chopped
• 60g (5 Tbsp) capers, drained
• 215g (1.3 cups) currants
• 90ml lemon juice
• 120ml extra virgin olive oil
• Garnish of dried cranberries or pomegranate arils (optional)Dressing• 2 cups Greek yogurt
• 2 tsp cumin
• 2 Tbsp honeyMethod1. Make the dressing by combining all ingredients in a jar and shaking, or whisking in a bowl.
2. Cook freekeh or barley in water according to packet directions, approx. 30-40 mins.
3. In another pan, cook lentils in water according to packet directions until soft but not mushy, approx. 30 mins.
4. Drain both and rinse well.
5. Toast each of the nuts/seeds separately in an oven (180C/350F) or frypan over medium heat 1-2 mins until golden and aromatic.
6. Combine grains, currants, onions and capers in a large bowl.
7. Toss with lemon juice and olive oil.
8. If serving immediately, add the chopped herbs and nuts and combine.
9. Garnish with optional cranberries/pomegranate and serve with the yogurt dressing.
10. If serving later, it’s best to add the nuts, herbs and other garnish just before serving.

Actual 4th of July humans...

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Last weekend I hosted a girls night, old-fashioned, spend-the-night party at my house.(In Australia they call it a sleepover, but I am reverting to my Southern roots. Why use one word when you can use several?)When I was a teenager, we did this almost every weekend — generally at the house of the friend with the least attentive parental units, for reasons I won't disclose to protect the guilty. (Superstar, Dox and Bethie — you know what I'm talking about.)From middle school onwards, every Friday night during the school year there was a football or basketball game, generally followed by a dance, and then the sleepover.Which meant packing.And I do mean packing:_My cheerleading uniform and ASICS._The hot pink floral sleeping bag I got in first grade (sadly compressed, but it matched the colour of my first three-speed bike, so I was loathe to give it up)._A backpack filled to the brim with Frosted Brownie lipstick and other Walgreens cosmetics purchased with hard-earned babysitting money._Hot rollers. A blow-dryer. A curling iron. Three separate blow-drying hairbrushes. Mousse - iykyk._Whatever old sorority jersey I was using as sleepwear at that point in time._Guess straight-legged jeans and a Merry-Go-Round top that passed as somewhat sexy — but not so sexy that my dad wouldn't let me out of the house in it. (The off-the-shoulder black t-shirt made the cut, so long as the matching single lace Madonna glove and the black leather mini were safely rolled up inside the aforementioned pink sleeping bag, where they remained unseen during parental bag inspection.)_A giant can of Final Net._And a toothbrush.It was the era of high hair and frosted everything, and I embraced it with the confidence and joy that only 16-year-olds possess.Today it makes me tired just writing it down, much less toting it around. (Every day I thank God that I now live near the beach and wear make-up about four times a year. Soooo much bloody effort.)
· · ·

When I got married in the 90s, my best friend MSB hosted a spend-the-night-party bridal shower. Pretty much identical to the high school ones, _but with lingerie gifts for me and better wine.It is one of the best memories of my entire wedding week.We converged on her house from all over — some of us already married, one or two pregnant, some travelling far, some local. We tossed down our sleeping bags, grabbed a glass of red and some snacks, and sat around the living room floor talking about life, work and all the things that felt so important to my 26-year-old self.Not much had changed. The same girls fell asleep early. The same ones were still up chatting at three o'clock in the morning. (How would I know that you ask?) The only real difference was that nobody's mother got called to come collect her in the middle of the night.I've had most of those girlfriends since I was five. I am still on a daily chat with them, and they are still my ride or die. Nobody has given me more support than my female friends since I started this online journey.
· · ·
But it's not just about my earliest friends. When my kids were younger, my best friend in Sydney regularly hosted sleepovers with our daughters. I would pack the girls up with whatever art supplies and snacks Cary had requested, and we would watch movies, do face masks and facials, create amazing artworks, cook something fab and generally have a great time hanging out with our girls._(There was also the memorable occasion when we almost served my six-year-old a cocktail — crisis thankfully averted at the very last second. Mothers of the Year, right here.)
· · ·
I still adore a spend-the-night party.So, when I floated the idea with my girls Kristin and Arwyn a few weeks ago, they were totally on board. After one false start — thank you, unknown virus — we were on.The girls arrived Saturday at midday, and in the spirit of pretending the whole event wasn't just about consuming copious amounts of wine and cheese, we headed out for a walk to Bondi to get our steps in and partake of the cultural portion of the program. (Eating Israeli food. That counts as cultural, right?)_On the way down we were sidetracked by an open for inspection — Sydney real estate speak for “yes, you may come in and look through my bathroom cupboards while making snarky comments about my choice of toilet colour.” The one in this house was sunflower yellow. I kid you not.After the toilet tour, we made it as far as Shuk, where we sat down to an incredible feast — the felafel killed it. Then into the Bondi Pavilion for a bit of art in the gallery, a walk on the beach, and an Aperol Spritz at the North Bondi RSL. (For my American readers: an RSL is a returned-servicemen's club. Think VFW hall, but with poker machines or pool tables and a water view.) Now THAT'S culture.Then it was home for the best surprise of the weekend. We headed to our rooms to change out of the lycra walking gear, and — it being the Fourth of July — the ladies called me out to the kitchen and gifted me a red, white and blue velour tracksuit that just screamed 1979.And what's more: they had matching ones._(I was later stopped in the grocery store by a woman who asked, “Wait — is that THE Kmart tracksuit?” I didn't even know it was a thing. But yes. Yes, it is.)Tracksuits donned, it was on to bubbles and dinner: a beef casserole I'd built almost entirely from rescued ingredients — good food that was headed for landfill before it got a second chance at being delicious. Making something good with what you've got. Which, come to think of it, is not a bad description of a decades-long friendship either.
_(Recipes from this girls night coming in a companion post starting next week — the first in a series of rescue recipes.)Then it was cheesy movies (and French cheese!), face masks, and NINE hours of sleep — two of which Kristin logged on the couch. After a leisurely morning, we met other friends for brunch and coffee at Tamarama Beach.Now that's what I call a girls night.
· · ·

So, what is it about hanging with my girls that makes it so special?(And yes, I know I'm calling us girls and I'm in my late 50s. In my head, I am still that 19-year-old girl with high hair and a lace Madonna glove.)Turns out it's not just me. Girlfriends are having a moment. The US Surgeon General has declared loneliness an epidemic. The Harvard researchers who have been following people's lives for more than eight decades keep landing on the same finding: the quality of our relationships predicts our long-term health and happiness better than our cholesterol does. Somewhere between the pandemic and the group chat, the wider world seems to be remembering something women have quietly known forever:_Friendship isn't the garnish. It's the meal.I have wonderful male friends, and very special relationships with them. But my women's community is a different kind of essential. These friendships have survived international moves, job changes, marital strife and decades of distance. We share some things — a school, a job history, kids who grew up together. And on plenty of fronts we don't match at all: politics, religion, geography.The friendships endure despite the differences._Honestly? They're richer for them. When someone has held your hand through four decades of real life, you stop needing them to vote like you, pray like you, or live in your time zone.You just need them to show up.And they do. They always do.
· · ·
_So to all the ladies in my life: thank you._For being there through it all, ride or die.For a childhood of bike rides, skating parties, hot summers and secret neighbourhood forts.For navigating the awkward teenage dating gauntlet of high hair in the deep South.For the college nights in underground clubs in 1980's Deep Ellum or Milk & Cookies at the KA house.For the late night parties in the East Village and Tetris at Boy Bar followed by laughter in the office the next day back when NYC was a tough nut to crack.For befriending me in a new country and giving me a posse that helped raise three kids. It really does take a village._For the caffeine, carpools and cocktails through financial crisis, fire and job loss — one after another after another. G, M, K, CC plus numerous others - You women saved me...I would not be here without you.For sharing your wisdom on pubescent, child-bearing and midlife hormones. (WTF did nobody warn us about this in advance? I hope my kids are reading this and will ask me about it one day.)For all of this and so much more, I am beyond grateful.We may be completely over sleeping in bags on the floor. But there is still something incredibly special about carving two whole days and a night out of the daily grind to spend with women you love.I'm headed home for a visit in a couple of months, and I'm fairly sure there's a spend-the-night party in my future. (not sure how that might work in the retirement home with the rents but will figure it out!)So what do you say, gals? Should we start a worldwide trend? #galpalsleepoverI'll bring the matching tracksuits.P.S. If you host one, I want to hear about it — what you ate, what you watched, who fell asleep first. And if anyone spots a hot pink floral sleeping bag circa 1974… I left it at in Edo’s rec room next to the inch worm and I want it back. Along with the boobs and bum I had then -thank you very much.