Donna O’Connor

Donna O’Connor I help introverted woman find their voice and create a life of their own design.

36 hours that felt like a lifetime.Our beloved Nikita went missing, which is completely unlike her. When she didn’t come...
14/05/2026

36 hours that felt like a lifetime.

Our beloved Nikita went missing, which is completely unlike her. When she didn’t come home for dinner last night we knew that something had happened to her. She has never missed an evening meal in the 11.5 years we’ve lived together. What followed was quite the ordeal - neighbourhood searches in the dead of night and sunrise, missing cat flyer drops, community noticeboard posts, laps around the streets calling her name… and many tears shed along the way.

As the hours passed and I sat in the unknown of what may have happened to her, contemplating every possible worst-case scenario, one thing kept returning to me.

The last time I had seen her.

She had come up onto the couch for cuddles and, instead of staying distracted by my phone or multitasking, I consciously put everything down to give her my full presence, love and attention. I stroked her slowly, looked into her eyes, and really met the moment.

And as painful as the uncertainty of the last 36 hours was, there was also deep gratitude in knowing our last interaction had been one of complete presence and love.

It felt like such a bittersweet reminder of how precious these ordinary moments really are with the ones we love. Human or animal.

None of us know when a moment may be the last in a particular chapter, season, relationship… or life itself.

A reminder to pause.
To look up.
To be here now.
To say the loving thing.
To give the hug.
To soften.
To truly arrive for the moment we are in.

Thankfully, our girl returned home this afternoon seemingly unscathed and very hungry! Needless to say the pets and cuddles being bestowed upon her tonight are being given with so much presence, love and gratitude 🤍

Precious final moments on Waiheke with this girl. This place has been a true sanctuary for all of us over the past 8 yea...
07/04/2026

Precious final moments on Waiheke with this girl. This place has been a true sanctuary for all of us over the past 8 years. It’s been so clear just how much Kimbra and Nikita are woven into the fabric of Sandhana, through the heartfelt farewells and love they’ve received these past few weeks.

And in the quiet reflection that time moves so quickly - and that each human year is so much more in a cat’s life - I find myself wondering if this little one will still be here with us when we return. She’s still so vibrant, yet the reality is she’s living with stage 3 kidney disease 😢

I always imagined she’d be laid to rest here, and I’m holding onto the hope that this will still be the case 🙏

30/11/2025

What is brown fat activation and why does it matter?

In this next video I’m speaking into one of the most beautiful benefits of cold immersion – activating your brown fat. Brown fat is the part of the body that helps us generate heat from within. When it’s activated, your system becomes more efficient at keeping you warm and more resilient each time you meet the cold.

It also has a profound effect on your metabolic health. Regular cold exposure and brown fat activation are linked to a reduced risk of diabetes and heart disease, and they support a steadier, stronger metabolic system overall. As we move through midlife and the body naturally shifts, this inner fire helps keep that middle-age spread at bay and supports you in feeling more energised and alive in your own skin.

And I’m speaking from personal experience here. I used to be that person who was always complaining about the cold. Now I actually embrace it. I can personally vouch that these changes are real. My body has adapted, my resilience has grown, and I genuinely feel warmer, even throughout the colder winter months, and more steady in myself because of it.

What I love is that you’re not just “getting used to the cold” – your body is evolving with you. Each immersion teaches your system how to work with the cold rather than brace against it, making the experience feel more spacious, calm, and surprisingly supportive.

I’ll be sharing the rest of this six-part series here on my personal account, so stay with me if you’d like to keep exploring the deeper layers of why this practice is so incredibly nourishing for the whole system.

28/11/2025

What’s happening with dopamine during a cold immersion?

In this next video I’m speaking into another beautiful benefit of the cold – the natural dopamine release it creates. When we step into an ice bath, the body responds with a surge of dopamine that can rise slowly and stay elevated for hours afterwards. It’s not the short, sharp spike we get from things like sugar or scrolling. It’s a clean, steady rise that supports mental clarity, motivation, and a real sense of inner uplift.

For so many people, this is why they feel clearer, more focused, and more alive after a cold immersion. It’s not imagined. It’s literally your brain chemistry shifting in a way that’s deeply supportive and sustainable.

What I love about this is how it builds over time. The more regularly you practice, the more your nervous system trusts the experience, and the more balanced these feel-good chemicals become. You’re training the body to access its own natural “reset”, a kind of inner brightness that carries you through the rest of your day.

And again, I can speak from experience. I notice the shift every single time. That calm alertness, that sense of being switched back on in the most grounded way. It’s one of the reasons I keep returning to the cold, even on the days when it feels like the last thing I want to do.

08/10/2025

After breathwork comes the sweetest drop into stillness – the body unwinds, the heart expands, and the vibration shifts into one of peace. The surest sign? When the resident cat deems you worthy enough to nest into.

I’ve had a trusted friend point out to me yet again how addicted I am to peak experiences, and it hit me hard. This is s...
13/09/2025

I’ve had a trusted friend point out to me yet again how addicted I am to peak experiences, and it hit me hard. This is something I’ve been aware of and working on for a long time now, yet when the carrot of hedonistic fun and excitement is dangled in front of me, off I go again, chasing after the next shiny thing.

It runs deep within me. Even the sports I favoured - eventing and skiing being two big ones - were adrenaline-fuelled, and I’d become obsessed with them, pushing myself further to reach that same high. It was the driving force behind my party years, the men I chose, the travel I did. I formed a whole identity around it.

Once I began waking up to a way of living that felt more authentic, grounded and real, I didn’t actually leave the pattern behind. I just shifted it. Instead of parties and men, it became meditation and breathwork. After a potent meditation session I’d catch myself becoming obsessed, hyper committed, secretly hoping the next one would take me even further. When I discovered breathwork, the same pull was there. I’d mix practices together to see how far I could go, seeking the next high even when I knew better.

And this still shows up in who I’m drawn to now. Even with all my awareness, all the recognition of the programming at play, it takes every ounce of my resolve to walk away. Because of course it feels good. It lights up all the pleasure centres. But the truth is it never lasts. The comedown is brutal. It destabilises me, sweeps me into obsession, pulls me away from myself.

This is the edge I walk with awareness now - noticing the pull, remembering the cost, and asking myself whether I want to orbit out again or stay steady on the ground.

I’ll be sharing more about this and the medicine of the mundane in my next post.

Yesterday wasn’t a great day. Beginning a day after only 4.5 hours sleep is never a great foundation. And layered into i...
12/09/2025

Yesterday wasn’t a great day. Beginning a day after only 4.5 hours sleep is never a great foundation. And layered into it all, it would have Mum’s 74th birthday. When she first passed, people told me the first year would be the hardest, that all the joy would have been taken out of anniversaries, birthdays, but with time it would ease. And they were not wrong, but I’ve found grief isn’t linear. We learn coping mechanisms that soften the sharp edges, but in some ways the distance only makes it harder. It has been longer since I last asked her a question, longer since I felt her presence in the everyday.

I wish I could ask if she too woke in the early hours during this stage of her life. I long to understand more deeply where her patterns came from – the parts she inherited, and the parts that were uniquely her. As I notice where they live in me, I get a clearer sense of what is mine to carry and what I’ve been handed down. There is so much I will never know.

What I mourn most are the possibilities. Who we might have become together as mother and daughter if she were here today, how she would meet me now as I change and grow. She is frozen in time, while I keep moving forward, wanting to bring her with me.

And yet, after letting myself feel it all last night, I woke lighter this morning. A decent night’s sleep, the grounding of quality time with some of the top shelf humans in my life, kitty cuddles, and the reminder that emotions, no matter how heavy, never last forever – they move through when I trust myself enough to let them.

“What?! I thought you were 38, not 48.”I’ve heard this a lot lately. And in all honestly? There’s a part of me that love...
07/09/2025

“What?! I thought you were 38, not 48.”

I’ve heard this a lot lately. And in all honestly? There’s a part of me that loves it. But there’s another part of me that wants to dig deeper, why does this matter so much?

Why, as women, are we celebrated for looking younger than our biological age, while men are revered for being silver foxes - wrinkles considered distinguished rather than haggard? Why do I still care, when I absolutely wouldn’t trade my current self for the woman I was at 28 or even 38?

Because I wouldn’t. Not for anything. The depth I’ve gained, the wisdom, the resilience, the empathy, the softness in places that used to be rigid - these are hard-earned gifts. They’ve come from life, and I love who I’ve become.

So why does some part of me still cling to youthfulness?

The truth is, I take exceptional care of myself – no longer (completely!) driven by vanity, but because of how vibrant I feel when I do. My life might look “boring” from the outside looking in to some. Alcohol free, a macro nutrient-rich diet, daily movement practices, breathwork, sauna, ice baths, prioritised sleep - I even gave up coffee this year. I tend to my body, mind, and soul with devotion And yes, I’ve had an incredibly good skincare routine with high quality products since my late teens (thank you, teenage breakouts).

But the reality is I am getting older. No matter how much I nurture myself, perimenopause is here there is no avoiding it. The 3am wake-ups that stretch into hours. The mornings where sleep feels like it will forever escape me. The body shifting in ways I can’t control. And the lack of control I have over this has been the biggest teacher.

This season has been about surrender. About being in the “nothing” when the tools I’ve leaned on don’t work. About lying awake in the still of the night, realising that maybe this is what I need: to understand what insomnia feels like, to be alone with my thoughts, to let creativity bubble up in the quiet hours.

Sometimes the breathwork helps. Sometimes yoga nidra helps. Sometimes the journalling does. But not always. And that’s okay. Because the biggest shift in me has been this - I no longer need to fix everything. I can accept what is.

I see this as an initiation. A threshold where women are invited to fully step into their power, but not without first sitting in the void, in the discomfort of the unknown, and learning to trust what’s being asked of us.

So yes, people still think I look younger than I am. But maybe the real beauty is in how I hold myself now - in my depth, my surrender, my capacity to live fully in what is.

What about you? Do you feel this paradox too? Loving who you’ve become, but still wanting to hold on to youth?

When I first got an ice bath, resilience wasn’t the main reason I was drawn to it. Sure, the idea of becoming more resil...
05/09/2025

When I first got an ice bath, resilience wasn’t the main reason I was drawn to it. Sure, the idea of becoming more resilient was appealing, but what fascinated me was the science - how exposing the body to healthy stress could help us handle life’s inevitable challenges with more ease.

What I didn’t realise then is how much life would call me to lean on that lesson. Just like lowering yourself into icy water, you learn to soften into the discomfort, breathe through it, and trust that it won’t last forever. Seasons work the same way.

Now, as spring slowly begins to emerge and the dark days of winter start to fade, I can feel that shift inside me too.

Because honestly, life hasn’t felt light for a long time - not really since Covid. Add to that the stress of renovations, the financial strain that came with it, leaving a 25-year career, ending a relationship, losing my mum and a dear friend to cancer, and navigating the unknown territory of running a business during a recession. It’s been a lot.

Through it all, I’ve had to face myself over and over again, breaking through old beliefs and ways of being that no longer serve me. And lately, there have been moments that show me just how far I’ve come. This week was one of them. Something that would have once shattered my oh-so-fragile ego barely made a ripple. In fact, I welcomed it. I stepped into the discomfort, into the challenge - because what I keep getting called deeper into is truth. Peeling back illusions and fantasies. It’s liberating.

And alongside that liberation, something beautiful is returning. A childlike wonder, my ability to laugh freely, to feel joy and lightness even while wading in life’s depths.

Once upon a time, I would have picked apart the photo taken of me on Wednesday. I would have started with the external imperfections, then spiralled inward. But now? I see the smile. I see the mirror reflecting back at me that it’s all worth it. That the light within me is always there, always accessible.

The world looks a little brighter, a little sparklier after a breathwork session. It transforms the lens through which w...
15/05/2025

The world looks a little brighter, a little sparklier after a breathwork session. It transforms the lens through which we see the world. And when you open your eyes to a view like this it’s next level. Off the beaten track, unmarked, this gem is a locals secret. Have you always wanted to go to Sedona? Or maybe this has piqued your interest… Watch this spaces as and I have a retreat in the pipeline for next year and we can’t wait to share this and so much more with you Xx

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