Not the gap between who you were and who you are becoming. Not the gap between where you are and where you want to be. I mean the one that opens up inside you when something ends. When someone leaves. When you leave. When a version of life you had quietly counted on quietly disappears.

Grief is not always loud. Sometimes it doesn’t announce itself at all. It just sits there -in the pause between one thought and the next. In the moment you reach for your phone to tell someone something, and then remember. On a Sunday afternoon, that used to mean something and now just means quiet.

We were never really taught how to grieve. We were taught how to recover. How to bounce back. How to find the silver lining, the lesson, the growth. And all of that can be true - and also, sometimes something just needs to be mourned. Without the lesson. Without the reframe. Without being made useful.

I wrote Mind the Gap in one of those spaces. The in-between place. Not in the acute pain of something ending but in the strange, quiet aftermath of the unknown space. When the world had moved on, and I hadn’t quite. When I was expected to be fine, and something in me was still sitting with the loss, wondering why no one had named it yet.

Grief is not just for death. It is for the relationship that ended. The friendship that quietly dissolved. The version of yourself you had to let go of to become who you are now. The career that didn’t work out. The city you left. The future you had mapped in your head that never came to be.

All of that deserves to be grieved. You are allowed to sit in the gap. You are allowed to not be over it yet. You are allowed to feel the weight of what was, even as you choose what comes next.

The gap is not a sign you are stuck. It is a sign you love something. That it matters or mattered. That you were present enough to feel the loss of it.

And in my experience, the only way out of the gap is through it. Not around it. Not above it. Not by filling it with noise and motion until it goes quiet. Through it. Sitting with it. Writing it down. Saying out loud - this hurt, and it mattered, and I am still here.

That is what this poem is. A companion for the gap. Something to sit with you in the in-between.

If this landed somewhere real in you, I want you to know you are not alone in the gap.

And if you are feeling stuck in a way that goes beyond grief, if you have been waiting to find your way back to yourself for a while now, I have been building something for exactly that.

30 Days to Unstuck is a daily audio series. Five minutes each morning. Thirty days. This is for the person who knows they are meant for more and just needs to find their way back.

It is not a productivity programme. It is not about doing more. It is about remembering who you are underneath everything that got layered on top.

The full series drops soon. Join the waitlist at 30 Days To Unstuck. Waitlist members hear first and receive early access.

The journey back starts here. 🤍

Thanks for reading Unplugwithani! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Thank you, Hashim Shamsi, for being in my corner and recording this.

And a special thank you to Co-Lab & Pirate Studios.

Love & Light

Ani x

Thanks for reading Unplugwithani! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I’m hosting an intimate workshop in London for women who want to slow down, process what they’re feeling, and reconnect with themselves in a real way.

No pressure. No performance. Just space. I would love to see you there.

📍 London🗓 April 12th⏱ 5.30-7.30 pm👥 Limited spaces

If this resonates, you can book here: Unplug: A place to reconnect with yourself

Love & Light

Ani x

But what if the truth is, we’re just not expressing what we actually feel?

This episode is about what happens when emotions stay unspoken, and why learning to process them changes everything

But behind every award is an invisible reality most people never talk about.

The thousands of artists who didn’t get the call.

This episode is for anyone creating something in the world without applause yet.

If this resonated with you, consider subscribing. Each week, I share reflections and audio notes on growth, relationships, creativity and the subconscious patterns shaping our lives.

Unplugwithani is a reader-supported publication. If this resonated with you, you will probably enjoy the deeper conversations happening here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Because the truth is, love does not just require empathy.

It requires responsibility.

Love & Light

Ani x

If you are navigating growth, relationships, subconscious healing and the courage to outgrow what no longer fits, subscribe and walk this season with me.

If someone in your life is constantly saying I am at my limit, send this to them. It might change how they see themselves.

Every opportunity I have had, I have written more poetry. My newfound voice in writing appears to be a more mature, self-assured, confident voice, though sometimes pouring words on the page can be painfully vulnerable. And when I read the words back or hear them (without sounding arrogant), I am really proud of the woman I am growing into, and the journey it’s taken to get there. My deepest hope is that there is more to come. Although I do need to be careful for what I wish for :)

The last two years, especially 2025, have felt somewhat like a rebirth. And so I figured if I did another spoken word album (The first one was called ‘Stuck with you’), it would be called ‘Rebirth.’

A big shout-out to Renaissance Studios for this collaboration, and to a dear friend, Hashim Shamsi, who has composed new music for this project.

In case you aren’t aware, some of my existing tracks are available to listen to on Spotify/iTunes. I am also plugging in Hashim’s lovely work.

Spotify Anisa Butt

Hashim Spotify

If you type Rebirth in Google, the Wikipedia definition that comes up is for ‘resurrection.’ Firstly, how apt is that?!

Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new lifespan in a different physical form or body after biological death.

Secondly, I love this definition because it captures the essence of a lot of my poetry for this album. The track I have included in this post is especially about the process of healing, because when you’re growing into something/someone new, that process isn’t pristine. It’s messy. And because it’s so darn messy, you have to heal before you can begin to create a new version. I want to use the metaphor of having an injury. You cut yourself, and you bleed. You clean the cut to the best of your ability, removing some of the debris (if there was any), preventing any chance of infection, cause sometimes when you’re wounded, bacteria can get inside before you realise. That wasn’t supposed to rhyme, but it did :) You then commence to cover it with a plaster, a temporary band-aid. It provides some sense of relief, preventing you from doing further damage, but the healing hasn’t happened; it’s just there, existing. It’s covered up, not always obvious to the outside eye, but it hurts. It still hurts.

If you’re brave, you may take off the plaster at night to let the cut air out a bit, speed up the healing process, but the cut doesn’t disappear overnight, no matter what you do.

Healing takes time.

I look at an old scar on my right hand. No special memory. I was in a food technology class in high school, using an oven glove which had a hole in it, and it touched the hot tray. Ouch! But has faded so much over the years that unless you squint and get real close, you can’t see it anymore. I can’t feel the pain anymore. But I know it was there and that event happened.

We can’t erase the past, but we can decide to let the past teach us something new. And we can also decide whether or not we carry these lessons into our future. I called this track ‘Growth feels like war,’ because it isn’t a linear process.

"I take five steps forward and ten steps back. I follow all the 7-step hacks to healing, to grieving, stop people pleasing, building self-worth, hijacking the brain to retrain it, build new neural pathways, but I keep finding myself in a traffic jam, wanting to procrastinate on socials for dopamine again."

I wish I could say it was easy.

This album is for anyone going through that messy process of figuring out who they are today. Separate from the past. It’s for those taking their time to understand their conditioning and patterns, the way they self-sabotage, the way they abandon themselves to keep the peace, and what their fundamental needs are. It is about being unapologetically yourself again and figuring out what that means. I want to say it’s also for those who have come out the other side of this work, but the work never really stops, does it? Isn’t life about shedding and beginning again? Perhaps the less we resist this, the more at peace we will be.

“When I see people stand fully in their truth, or when I see someone fall, get back up, and say, ‘Damn. That really hurt, but this is important to me, and I’m going in again. My gut reaction is, ‘What a badass.’” – Brené Brown

I hope you resonate with the poem, and more importantly, I hope it inspires you to keep stepping toward your truth. This journey is one of self-discovery, and the more I document it, the more I realise who I am and what I actually stand for. Reading old work makes me realise how far I have come, especially on days when I feel like I’m making progress.

If you want to stay tuned with everything album-related and otherwise, please support by subscribing to my Substack. I hope you share it with people you love and care about, those who are currently in the mess, unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel, those who have come out the other side, only to realise there’s a lot more where that came from…and those, who may not have developed an appetite for doing the deep work but could do with a little nudge.

Love & Light

Ani x

P.S. I would love to hear your thoughts on this one.

 Ready for an emotional reset? Enroll in my guided course designed to help you reconnect, release, and realign — available now at ⁠payhip.com/unplugwithani⁠.  Looking for one-to-one support? I offer personalised coaching for a select few. Email ⁠unplugwithani@gmail.com⁠ to learn more and join the waitlist.

 Ready for an emotional reset? Enroll in my guided course designed to help you reconnect, release, and realign — available now at ⁠payhip.com/unplugwithani⁠.  Looking for one-to-one support? I offer personalised coaching for a select few. Email ⁠unplugwithani@gmail.com⁠ to learn more and join the waitlist.

💫 Ready for an emotional reset? Enroll in my guided course designed to help you reconnect, release, and realign — available now at ⁠payhip.com/unplugwithani⁠.✨ Looking for one-to-one support? I offer personalised coaching for a select few. Email ⁠unplugwithani@gmail.com⁠ to learn more and join the waitlist.

💫 Ready for an emotional reset? Enroll in my guided course designed to help you reconnect, release, and realign — available now at payhip.com/unplugwithani.
✨ Looking for one-to-one support? I offer personalised coaching for a select few. Email unplugwithani@gmail.com to learn more and join the waitlist.

The Emotional Cost of Creating in 2025 — and How to Build Resilience Without Burning Out 

Here, you’ll hear honest conversations with creatives, dreamers, and doers from around the world — plus powerful solo episodes to help you break patterns, heal, and level up emotionally.

After launching the 8-Day Emotional Reset and living through my own transformation... I knew it was time for this podcast to evolve too.

If you're ready for real growth, deep stories, and the tools to thrive — you’re in the right place.

Welcome to a brand new season of Unplug with Ani.

This podcast started with a simple idea: to have real conversations with creatives about their journeys — the highs, the lows, and the messy middle.

But since then... my own journey's evolved...

My 8 Day Emotional Reset is out soon!

Julie then transitioned to the film industry and by not knowing so much the field she ended up in VFx where she worked most of her career.  Having her last name on the latest Marvel, Disney, Warner Bro and Netflix, Julie figured out her creativity wasn't used to its fullest.  With her strong passion for short videos, short moving storytelling...she gained credibility in the world of social media.  

After a year in Paris, Julie relocated to Montreal where she focuses on the storytelling of branding in visual while focusing on an upcoming vegan project. Athlete, producer, creator and entrepreneur, Julie is known to move with intention and purpose.