Welcome Back To The Leanne Weekly…
The response to the very first issue honestly took me by surprise in the best, most humbling way. Hitting ‘send’ felt a little nerve-wracking, and knowing it was landing in your inboxes had me sweating. Your messages, your stories, and your willingness to share what resonated with you reminded me why I wanted to create this space in the first place: to build something real. So Thank You. We’re rolling now, I appreciate you massively, and I hope you all found a WIN (however small) in your week.
Quick tip: If you’d like to reply or share your thoughts, you can do that via the little speech bubble (top left of this email, next to the heart). That way we can build community here and you can connect with each other (should you want to). Personal responses sent directly by hitting reply are still SO welcomed too. This is your space as much as it is mine, and I’m honoured to read them.
The last few months have been full of learning, unlearning, growing, and way too much Googling of everything. Through all of it, I’ve felt some really profound shifts in how I’m showing up, both for myself and for you. Your feedback means so much, please keep it coming. I love to know what you want from this space, and I’m motivated to bring that to you in the most ‘me’ way possible.
One more thing before we dive in: so many of you reached out around fertility last week. It was more than I anticipated, and I want you to know we’ll return to it soon in a thoughtful, deeper way, where it can be of real value to anyone and everyone reading.
This week it’s all about REST, COMPARISONS, and INTERIORS. A mix of the deep, the real, and a little bit of fun, so get comfy, and let’s dive in.
Cycles & Rhythms…
I’ve been thinking a lot about cycles lately, not just the hormonal kind (though we’ll definitely get into those at some point), but the natural cycles of life, work, and growth. For me, those cycles often show up as rhythms (the ex dancer in me): the ebb and flow between go-go-go energy and the pause that reminds me to breathe.
My family and I just took our annual staycation to the New Forest, a part of the UK we fell in love with just after the pandemic, and now a tradition that has become a built-in pause in my year. The dogs love it too, (we have Jags, a working cocker spaniel and my parents have my furry sister, a chocolate lab called Kaycee) and I’ve actually linked their favourite toy of the Summer, because anything that entertains a dog for more than 5 minutes is worth noting! Lulworth Cove and The Pig in Brockenhurst are two of my all time favourite spots, and Whitefield Moor is pure magic! You can walk for hours surrounded by horses roaming freely. Honestly, that’s the best part every time, and it’s only 2.5 hours (on a good day) from London.
Every year, the trip gives me perspective, a reset, a lot of laughs and love, AND that gentle reminder to slow my own rhythm down.
‘Rest is one of those rare things that truly sells itself, but only once you let yourself lean into it.’
Why Rest Became My Source Of Joy…
This might sound strange coming from someone who gets people moving for a living, but I’m a little obsessed with rest too. Not just sleep (though that’s crucial), but active, intentional rest.
Did you know women actually need around 20 minutes more sleep per night than men? Our brains are wired to multitask and juggle more complex thought patterns throughout the day, which means we need deeper recovery to repair and restore. When we don’t get enough rest, the effects cut sharper: higher inflammation, disrupted hormones, increased stress, and a greater link to anxiety and low mood.
Rest isn’t indulgence. It’s biology. It’s healthy. It’s strength.
In my 20s and early 30s, I thought rest was the enemy of progress. I was always up for a good time, living ‘in the moment’, never worrying about the next day. I wouldn’t change that chapter, but the point is, I didn’t give rest a single thought. Late nights with friends, always pushing through, optimising every moment. What I didn’t realise then was that between hormonal changes, the demands of work, and the pressures of life, you have to know when to press pause… or life will press pause for you.
And when that happens, you don’t get to choose when or how. Forced rest - an opportunity to learn and do better? Yes. But fun? Not exactly. Not at first, anyway.
Recovery and rest aren’t the same thing (even if we throw the words around like they are). Recovery is active; it’s the stretching, the mobility work, the water bottle glued to your hand, the foam roller you love to hate. Basically, all the things that help your body return to base after effort.
Rest, on the other hand, is passive. It’s the stillness, the pause, the nothingness that lets your whole system reset.
It’s reading a book because you’re lost in the story, not because it’s ‘useful’.
It’s running a hot bath just because it feels good, not because it ticks the ‘self-care’ box.
It’s saying no to plans because home in your PJs with tea sounds better.
It’s lying on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon with no guilt.
It’s taking a slow walk with no step count in mind.
It’s staring out the window, phone nowhere in sight.
It’s letting yourself nap, laugh, wander, and just be.
Rest lives in the ordinary moments, the small pauses that remind us we’re human, not machines. It’s time well spent. In a world that glorifies the hustle, choosing rest is actually an act of courage. It’s saying, ‘I am enough’, even when I’m not ‘doing’ all of the time.
And the truth is, when you give yourself permission not to be ‘on’ constantly, everything else you love: your work, your relationships, even your workouts, get better too. That’s a great feeling!
I’m definitely no rest guru (though I’d love to be!), but it’s about us remembering that rest is part of the work, not separate from it and we deserve it. So…
Your challenge: this week, schedule some rest time like you’d schedule a workout. Even 5-10 minutes count. Treat it like the most important meeting in your diary. Find what works for you, but most importantly, give yourself permission to rest, GUILT FREE. Bonus points if it makes you smile :-)
The Comparison Trap…
Switching gears a bit, but let me start with a quote I always keep in my back pocket:
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Being human, I still struggle with it sometimes. In issue 1, I mentioned feeling ‘behind in life’ when it came to starting a family, and so many of you resonated with that in your own way. I don’t let comparison hang around for too long (that’s a slippery slope), but pretending it doesn’t exist would be a lie.
I’ve been in front of the camera for most of my life: from dance competitions as a kid, to a professional career that spanned over a decade, and now 7 years (and counting) at Peloton. In the dance world, comparison was constant. You had to audition all the time and fit into a line up of dancers hoping you’d get the gig, fit into costumes, and hope you weren’t positioned at the back of the pack. It was part of the job. You either grew a thick skin or the industry swallowed you whole. Still, those same girls I was often compared against are my best friends to this day, which proves we did find ways to support each other through it, and despite the comparisons, we lived our dreams out alongside one another and loved every second…mostly! I can’t wait to dive deeper into friendships, how important they are, especially as adults. Especially as women.
Coming to Peloton and being told I could just be me? Honestly, it felt a little alien — but also so f***ing freeing.
Then there’s social media. I’m a millennial, so I’ve kind of lived both sides: the childhood without it, then the years of uploading every photo to ever exist to Facebook (why did we do that?!) before finding our way to Instagram, TikTok, and everything else. I don’t remember being a teenager or young adult being obsessed with my phone though, THANK GOD 😂 To this day, I still can’t get to grips with TikTok. I don’t know how everyone keeps up with it all!
Most of what we scroll past now is curated within an inch of its life: polished, filtered, angled. Even the most beautiful people don’t actually look like their magazine covers. I had a real ‘pinch me’ moment when I was on the Women’s Health cover after my breast cancer journey, and I’m here to tell you I loved how I looked in the photos, but it’s certainly not what I look like every day. At the weekend, I even saw an AI model selling beauty products for a very popular brand online. Women who aren’t even real - Imagine comparing yourself to someone who doesn’t exist?!
And that’s just the surface-level stuff. Scroll long enough and you’ll find ‘crazy early morning routines’ ‘perfect homes’, ‘dream weekends’. It’s enough to make anyone wonder: Am I doing enough? Am I enough?
Here’s the truth as I see it: your real life is yours, and your only competition is who you were yesterday. Some weeks I put my phone down and step away completely, and I never regret it. How my life feels off-screen will always matter more to me than how it looks on-screen. And if that, for a period of time, means less followers, less likes and less engagement - I’ll survive!
Authenticity isn’t a strategy, it’s a choice. Every day, I choose to show up as myself, imperfections and all (by the way Celine Dion has such a great track called ‘Imperfections’ - love her!)
The more you try to be like someone else, the less the world gets of you. You vs You, always.
Let me add a twist to that first quote:
“Comparison is the thief of joy, but the teacher of perspective. Use it not to diminish yourself, but to remind yourself of how far you’ve come.”
So now we move on from inner peace to interior design, because both deserve a little attention.
Home Renovations…Another Source Of Joy…
I'm pretty much obsessed with interiors. Home decor, furnishings, artwork, paint colours, fabrics and then seeing it all come together, brings me so much happiness (despite often having to talk Ben round to my vision, which sometimes dampens the initial buzz, haha) I think we all strive for our home to be our haven and I spend a lot of time trying to create an environment that lets me live well. We moved into our home in 2022 and every wall was painted dark grey. I mean, EVERY ONE! Considering I then spent a lot of time in our home recovering from treatment, grieving the loss of my best friend Danielle, and then trying to rebuild after a lot of trauma, I needed more than miserable grey. I needed life, colour, cheeky details, fun prints and wellness hacks dotted about to bring a smile to my face every day. I’m not a neutral kind of girl, unless you count leopard print as neutral?! Because I do!
As we prepare for the arrival of our baby in a few months, it feels even more meaningful to create a space that feels like an expression of ourselves, AND that functions well. I’ll be sharing some updates of renovations round 2! (Can’t believe we’re going again after last year, but we are who we are and this is a much smaller project. Last year we planned 2 weddings, trained for and ran a marathon and had renovations going on at the same time. Wouldn’t advise.) We are working on making our basement extra cosy, and a (VERY simple) nursery.
One thing with me, I’m either drawn to the most expensive piece OR I’m a die hard bargain hunter, there’s no inbetween! Home Bargains is my happy place. I’d give anything to have a Target on my doorstep! A lovely reader told me that Home Bargains have all the Halloween bits stocked, so on my next day off - I’m first in line, and my baskets will be full. The key to getting the best bits for any seasonal moment is to start early. You laugh now, but this is the way!
When we get SEASONAL… you’ll have to hold me back. It’s not long now until our 12ft skeleton can take its moment centre stage again. I want to get it a friend this year, but we literally do not have space for another obscenely large skeleton. Or do we?!
List Of Joy…
📚 Reading: Stop Letting Everything Affect You by Daniel Chidiac I just started reading this, haven’t finished yet, but it’s already feeling like it’s talking directly to me. As someone who overthinks a lot, and is super empathetic in all that I do - it’s giving me tools to navigate overthinking and spiralling.
🎧 Listening: Got a new favourite song that’s been dropping into a few classes over the last week or so… Giving us the end of summer vibes! Definite MOOD BOOSTER! Good Vibrations - Tensnake, Bobby Harvey, Sarah Bird Put it on, turn it up loud and just have that dance party!
🥣 Making: At least once a week, we make this dish: The Hot Honey Cottage Cheese Beef Bowl The Beef can be substituted for lentils / chickpeas / tofu for any non meat eaters. Let me know if you enjoy it too. We love it, especially the pickled onions!
LTK Of The Week…
Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant - for smooth skin on the daily. I use this at night before my cleanser. Brilliant for keeping dull skin away. I know you love the skincare / make up stuff and this is one of those products I’ve literally been using on and off since a teenager!
The Elvy Advanced Blocker Wireless Charger - I’ve spoken a bit about social media today, and phones in general, so wanted to add the bedside chargers we have at home to block EMFs.
The beach toy loved by the dogs, and not torn apart!
Lululemon trainers - Mine have just arrived, but I have these in a few colour ways already. I find these super versatile. Great for walking / designed for running and look great day to day.
Reformation satin trousers - I love an elasticated waist, and I LOVE a pair of trousers you can dress up and down, and perfect as we very slowly get into Autumn!
Bonus - One for the ladies! My favourite collagen powder, nutritionist recommended. Strength, stretch, and support from the inside out.
That’s a wrap, friends! By opening this newsletter, you’ve said yes to connection, to spending a few minutes with my words and thoughts, and that honestly means the world to me. I always want to hear yours too, so let me know what got you this week, and what you want more of! Thank you for showing up here. I hope you find a pocket of time to rest this week. ;-)
Until next week,
P.S. Know someone who could use a reminder to rest, or loves a good Home Bargains find? Forward this on, you never know whose day you might brighten.
