Tegan Cannell

Tegan Cannell Mentor. Mum. Observer of the human experience. Helping you meet life from the inside out.

There's a lot of beautiful, quotable wisdom floating around these days. The kind you screenshot, nod along to, and genui...
17/06/2026

There's a lot of beautiful, quotable wisdom floating around these days. The kind you screenshot, nod along to, and genuinely take in as you read it.

But let me ask you, how often do you actually take the time to integrate those golden insights into your life?

Because liking it and living it are worlds apart.

A couple of weeks ago, four of my friends (two married couples), the chosen-family kind, packed up their families (liter...
15/06/2026

A couple of weeks ago, four of my friends (two married couples), the chosen-family kind, packed up their families (literally... they camped at our place for 2 nights) and made the drive out to our place. It's a fair haul for them, anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hours, so it goes without saying we don't manage it nearly often enough. And when we do, it's gloriously disjointed, because between the three families we've got six kids somewhere between the ages of three and seven. But boy, that time together is like fertiliser for the heart.

What struck me, in amongst the chaos, was the way we share our stories. Parenting, relationships, and for us women, the wild and often baffling changes that come with being at the mercy of perimenopause. We tell each other what we're facing, and as we do, we're sharing and listening and scanning for the places our experiences line up. Sometimes we find them. And sometimes we land on a little nuance where our situations or our approach is nothing the same.

That right there is one of the gifts a community, or a mentor, can offer in a season of inward exploration and change. I am all for 'self-help', but a safe place to say what's actually going on, and the chance to hear someone else's version of it held up next to your own provides a completely new level. It's in that back and forth that we feel seen, and heard, and (even if only marginally) understood. We also get to watch how other people are choosing to meet their situation, and we either learn something from it, or we walk away reassured that the way we're doing things is just fine.

There's a lot of beautifully polished, perfectly structured self-help out there these days, and plenty of it is genuinely wonderful. But none of it can quite replicate this sense of fellowship. Because some things can't be downloaded, and being truly seen and heard by another person is one of them.

15/06/2026

What subconscious fears are you letting run your life? Are you going to choose to let them, or are you going to learn how to meet them and move through them?

There is no right or wrong answer, just awareness to be had about the limitations or freedom that come with your choice.

Have you ever had that moment as a parent where you just snap?(Of course you have. You're a parent.)The kind where you c...
11/06/2026

Have you ever had that moment as a parent where you just snap?

(Of course you have. You're a parent.)

The kind where you can feel the pressure building all morning... the noise, the requests, the mum mum mum, the thing-you-asked-them-not-to-do-now-being-done-anyway... and then something small, almost ridiculous, tips you over. You snap. Louder than you meant to. Sharper than you meant to. And then comes the wave of regret almost before the sentence is finished.

I've been there more times than I'd like to admit. What this is is a nervous system under a sustained load. And if this is you, please hear this:

The issue isn't the snap. The issue is what we do to ourselves after the snap.

Instead of simply recognising the moment as an opportunity to learn something about who we no longer want to be, or a behaviour we no longer want to display, and then getting on with life… it is not uncommon, particularly for mothers, to dwell on what just happened. Aka Mum guilt.

The replaying of it over and over, the shame spiral, the story that we've damaged them, ruined the day, failed at the one thing we most want to do well. That second layer, the pressure we put on ourselves on top of what already happened, is often heavier than the moment itself. And it's the part that erodes us over time.

So I invite you to consider this: you grew up learning what it meant to be human by watching the adults around you, most of whom were still trying to work it out themselves. Then you became the adult. The parent. The one shaping another person's nervous system, sense of safety, sense of self, while still untangling your own inner world and trying to survive in the outer world at the same time.

That's a lot. Of course we fumble.

So please, cut yourself some slack. You already know when you've handled a moment poorly. You don't have to keep beating yourself up about it on top of feeling it.

But here's the part I really want to point out:

Of course we should always be striving to show up for our kids in kind, loving, regulated ways. That matters. But pushing down how we're actually feeling underneath, just to keep the surface calm, isn't the way. And reacting to every unchecked feeling the moment it rises in us isn't the way either.

There's a third way.

It's presence. It's learning to actually turn toward what's building on the inside (the frustration, the overwhelm, the longing, the tired) and meet it fully. Just to be with it, the way you'd be with one of your children mid-meltdown, without rejecting them for melting down.

That's the work. You validate your feelings by meeting them fully, because when your own 'inner child' feels seen and heard and understood, she finally settles. And so do you.

11/06/2026

If I worked in an office, and we had a ‘come to work dressed as your favourite superhero’ day… I’d come as Dr Vanessa Lapointe 🤣

Honestly. This woman is my parenting hero… what a legend 🤍

10/06/2026

Our internal states often dictate our external behaviour. This practice is 1. Not resisting what is going on 2. Meeting what’s there… fully 3. Creating the space and capacity for conscious choice instead of habitual reactivity.

Become more present to your own internal world. Slow it down. Meet it fully. Make choices consciously instead of reactively.

Like any skill, the more you practice the easier it gets 😉

08/06/2026

Catch a heavy thought such as “what I have to say doesn’t matter”, “nobody’s listening to me”, “I’m such a failure”, and ask it one question:

Is that even true?

Often we find it is a belief, not a fact. A useful follow up question you can use to help with the reframe is:

What else could it mean, or what else might be true?

Hi, I'm Tegan. I'm an awareness and mindfulness mentor.People usually find their way to me from one of a few places. The...
08/06/2026

Hi, I'm Tegan. I'm an awareness and mindfulness mentor.

People usually find their way to me from one of a few places. They have either:

➡ hit a wall, where nothing is working no matter how hard they try
➡ got everything they once wanted and still feel unsatisfied, or
➡ reached a transitional stage of life, either trying to become someone new or trying to find their way back to themselves

Regardless of which path led them here, there tends to be a common thread. A longing to finally feel content, satisfied, and whole. But it feels like no matter what they try, the happiness they long for stays just out of reach. They've been working hard their whole lives, and they can't work out what they're doing wrong.

And here's what I've come to understand: we are trying to fill an internal quest for satisfaction with external measures, and that will never give us the internal state we long to feel. Unless we learn how to choose our internal state independent of what's happening around us, our happiness will remain hijacked by our to-do list, or limited by how much of life and the people in it we can manage to control (and we wonder why we end up exhausted!)

I'm not here to fix you or tell you how to live. What I offer is the opportunity for deeper self awareness, and from there, the capacity to see and respond to your life in new ways.

If that speaks to something in you, welcome. Have a look around.

Meditation can be an exceptionally powerful practice, and if you're unprepared for what it's capable of, it can leave yo...
07/06/2026

Meditation can be an exceptionally powerful practice, and if you're unprepared for what it's capable of, it can leave you a little destabilised.

For me, it began as a fairly generic practice of observing my thoughts. But it soon became a gateway to something far more profound and pure, a source of intuitive wisdom I was completely not expecting.

The first leap was an intrinsic sense of connection with all of life. It was the moment a whole heap of intellectual knowledge about spirituality became a known experience — I felt the depth of what was being pointed to through my entire core. It was blissful, peaceful, and comforting. It lasted days, possibly a week or two; I'm honestly not sure.

Then life carried on, the elevation faded, and I found myself less and less able to reach what I had come to know. It slipped back into an intellectual teaching I was, once again, grasping at. When you feel something so wonderful and then it fades, the drop feels even more intense, and I started to wonder whether what I'd experienced had actually been a moment of insanity.

But as I doubted it, I kept returning to the clarity and comfort I'd felt all the way through my core, and I knew it was impossible for something so peaceful, so still, so full of... love? to be insanity. It was in fact quite the opposite. It was the most real thing I had ever experienced.

That taste of momentary knowing left me with an insatiable desire to "know" this state intrinsically. From there came some life-changing insights, not only from meditation, but from moments of deep contemplation. It was like my questions were being answered in a metaphoric language, not just ideas but visual and sensory... something I could feel all the way through my being.

What's true for me today is this: I don't live in a state of pure knowing. I fluctuate between presence and old perception. Deep intuition is occasional, not occuring in every moment. But, what I learned through intuition became an internal compass — a felt sense of how to guide myself through this "in-between." When I'm deep in the habitual mind, I still perceive and react in ways that no longer align with who I want to be, and my inability to "just be present" the way I know is possible has me doubt what I experienced.

But when I stop listening to the mind and start seeing and listening from the heart (from pure present-moment awareness) there's so much silence in the mind, and so much stillness in the world around me. No stress, no fear, no willpower or longing to change a thing. I haven't found the word for it yet, (I'm sure there is one, but I don't know what it is), but in that place I'm aware of the absence of so much of what usually causes my pain (the internal uncensored mind that leads to much unnecessary stress and overwhelm).

So why share this?

To me, meditation is an essential part of my life. For a while I moved between the two (lifted into presence, then pulled back by the undertow of habitual living), but back then the swings weren't gentle waves; they came in more like a tsunami. What kept me afloat was that I had some awareness of what was happening, and a mentor to turn to for solace when I needed it. In other words... I wasn't completely blindsided.

These days there are meditation apps, guided meditations everywhere, and everyone talking about the benefits, and I'm fully on board, I love it. But I've also experienced some of what gets called the "negative effects of meditation," and for someone who doesn't know the sheer power of what can open up, that can be destabilising and genuinely frightening.

Stan Grof made a distinction I find really useful: there's a difference between a spiritual emergency and a spiritual emergence. Spiritual emergency is what happens when that same emergence comes too fast, too hard, or too overwhelmingly to integrate and tips into crisis. The person can be genuinely destabilised, frightened, unable to function normally for a while.

Some crises genuinely are transformative openings AND genuine psychosis exists and needs proper care, and the wisdom is in not collapsing either into the other. So if life ever becomes unbearably overwhelming at any stage of your inward journey, even simply from using a meditation app… stop. If you don't yet have the internal compass to navigate what's happening, seek the support you need. Sometimes that's a spiritual guide; sometimes it's a counsellor or a therapist. There's no one-size-fits-all, but what's always true is that if you feel like you're in over your head, it's time to take hold of an outstretched hand.

Asking for help to work through the conditioned mind, even medical help, is not failure. Know yourself, know what you're capable of, and know where your limits are. And don't ever be afraid to ask someone to help you on the journey.

Your health is your responsibility... but you don't have to do it alone.

🤍 Much love, Tegan

Three core things to consider: 1. Look for someone who meets you where you are, in the season you're actually in, but wh...
04/06/2026

Three core things to consider:

1. Look for someone who meets you where you are, in the season you're actually in, but who also stretches you just a little beyond it. Too far toward the familiar and you'll only circle the same things you already know. Too far into territory you've never touched and you might not resonate with what they're offering at all.

2. Be clear about the level of support you need. There's a real difference between inward awareness, spirituality and self-help work on the one hand, and therapeutic or clinical support on the other, and they serve very different needs. If you're ever unsure which one you're after, a quick search on the difference is honestly worth your time.

3. And where you can, find someone whose experience aligns with what you're moving through. You wouldn't see a podiatrist about a toothache. It isn't a hard rule, but it can help more than you'd think.

There will be times when what you need is credentials and clinical training, and other times when what you need is simply someone who has walked the path a few steps ahead of you. Both matter. The real skill is knowing which season you're in.

🤍

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