Nicky Cooper - Wellness & Parenting Practitioner RN MSc

03/12/2025

In this episode of Echoes of Destiny, Andra Annette and myself as co-host dive into the real conversation most health professionals avoid:

Why are doctors expected to give nutrition advice… when they’re barely trained in it?
And why are nurses, without the title or the support left holding the whole system together?

In this episode of Echoes of Destiny, Andra Annette and co-host Nicky Cooper dive into the real conversation most health professionals avoid:Why are doctors ...

02/12/2025

If you spoke the truth today, what in your life would have to change?

Most people think they need more motivation or meaning right now. They don’t. What they actually need is honesty.

Because you can’t integrate a shift you’re still pretending isn’t happening. And that’s why so many people feel stuck. They’re trying to push through a life they’ve already outgrown.

Let the old identity die without trying to resurrect it. There’s heartbreak in that, you lose versions of yourself you lived inside for years. But growth starts the moment you admit what’s no longer working.

Just your truth. Stop fighting to stay the same.

The discomfort, the tiredness, the restlessness, none of it means you’re failing. It means you’re changing. And that life is trying to change with you.

So ask yourself, what part of you is trying to grow, and what is fighting to stay the same?

Start there. Build enough stillness to hear your truth. You’ll probably meet the part of you that’s been waiting for years.

27/11/2025

Today I know and acknowledge some people are gathering around long tables. Whilst others are quietly trying to hold themselves together on their own.

We don’t mark 'Thanksgiving' here in Aotearoa New Zealand, or where I grew up in the UK, but the older I get, the more I understand the value of pausing long enough to acknowledge the quietest and loudest of things that carried me through.

I’m thankful for all the parts of my life that didn’t make sense until years later. For the detours that felt like failures but were actually redirections. For the nights I thought I’d broken, only to realise I was being stripped back to something truer to who I was, what I needed, and where I was meant to go.

I’m thankful for the work that’s asked more of me than I ever thought I had, because it shaped the woman I’ve become. For the people who walked with me through the hard yards. For the ones who left when they needed to, because that taught me discernment. For my husband and children, who have been both my undoing and my greatest remembering.

And I’m thankful for what’s unfolding next...the part of my life I can feel, but can’t quite name yet. The future that asks me to trust myself more than I ever have. The path I’m stepping into with a steadier heart and a little less noise inside my wonderfully quirky head.

If today is your day of gathering, I hope you find pockets of honesty and softness. If it’s just another Thursday, that’s okay too. Maybe gratitude doesn’t need a holiday... maybe it just needs a moment.

Most of us forget that gratitude isn’t just for the light. It’s also for the shadows, for the strength and courage we didn’t know we had, and for the distance we’ve already travelled.

Sometimes the moment you realise how far you’ve come is the moment you finally remember yourself.

25/11/2025

You reached out to me that morning because you'd hit a wall. The newborn haze had faded, everyone else had moved on, yet you were still waking up with waves of fear you couldn’t explain. “I feel so alone,” you whispered.

You thought the problem was you.
It wasn’t.

What you were feeling was the biology of acute anxiety. A nervous system stuck in survival mode from carrying too much, sleeping too little, and trying to parent with virtually no village. You thought you were failing when the truth was simple. You were overwhelmed, under-supported, and doing the most important job in the world on an empty tank.

We moved gently.
Grounding.
Understanding.
Small steps back to yourself.
And slowly, you began to breathe again.

Months later, I saw your name pop up in a parenting forum, this time offering comfort to another mother who felt like you once had. You took your lived experience and turned it into connection. You paid it forward. And I couldn’t have been prouder.

Here’s the truth no one says loudly enough!
Parents aren’t burning out because they’re failing. They’re burning out because they’re trying to raise tiny humans in a world that offers almost no real support.

And this...this is why I stepped away from my publicly funded nursing role. Because we’re not fully prioritising the very start of life, and everything that comes after stems from this season.

I didn’t leave because I stopped caring.
I left because I care too deeply to keep pretending this isn’t happening.

So if you see a mother or father of a little human today, tell them this.
"You’re doing the most important job in the world, and you were never meant to do this alone".

And if you’re that parent right now… nothing is wrong with you.
It’s the load. We see you.
You are not the problem.
You deserve a world that shows up for you.

21/11/2025

A message to whoever needs it...

Some of us move through the world feeling things we don’t talk about.
You notice the tiny shifts in people.
You hear what isn’t being said.
You understand things you wish you didn’t have to understand, because life made you pay attention too early. Too young.

It leaves you with this mix of strength and loneliness. You see people clearly.
Yet you feel what’s underneath their smiles.
You know when someone is hurting often before they do.

It’s not the gift you asked for. Sometimes it feels like a curse because it’s something you had to grow into.

What makes harder is that not everyone will meet you there.

Most people don’t live at that depth.
Not because they’re unkind.
They just haven’t had to swim that far down.

So you become the one who listens, the one who holds, the one who understands… and very few people know how to offer that back to you.
Which can make you feel alone, even when you’re surrounded.

If you’ve ever wondered what’s wrong with you, please hear this...
Nothing is wrong with you.
You’re just tuned into a level of awareness that most people never see.

Don’t harden because of it.
Don’t shrink yourself smaller.
Just be more careful about where you give it so freely. Find the ones who can sit with you completely.

They really do exist.

And until then, stay close to yourself.
Your depth isn’t the problem.
It’s the part of you that kept you safe, and it’s also the part that will lead you to the people who can finally meet you there.

You’re not alone in this.
There are more of us than you think.

18/11/2025

What is the one thing you’ve never told a soul… and what has it cost you to keep it?

I once had a patient who was known on the ward for being cold, difficult, and hard to please. I’d seen her before. We all had.

She'd carried her secret for over sixty years. No one ever knew, not her husband, not her children, not even her closest friend.

She told me because I asked.
Not kindly. Not gently. Just truthfully.

“I don’t know what your problem is, my lovely,” I said, standing there with an armful of linen and a bowl of water, “but I’m not leaving until you tell me.”

And she looked at me. And then she spoke.

Ninety minutes later, I knew the weight she’d carried since she was twenty.

The belief that a moment of weakness had changed the entire trajectory of her life. A wartime mistake. A secret. A grief. A punishment she actually believed she deserved.

She told me her truth while I bathed her, held her hand, listened. And then she wept. And something in both of us changed forever.

She died the very next day. And I was the last person she saw. I think she waited until someone could carry her story, so she didn’t have to. Unburdened

Not every nurse gets to see that kind of moment.

The truth is you don’t have to fix anyone.
But you might be the first person who makes them feel safe enough to tell their truth.
And that, is everything.

Not every secret is life-ending.
But some of them are life-consuming.
And you won’t always know the cost until you finally speak it aloud.

And if that’s you...please don’t carry it forever.

14/11/2025

And maybe that’s okay...

We’ve reached the edge of doing and knowing, and we’re tired in a way that rest alone cannot fix. Maybe we’re finally being brought back to what’s real.

This is where our strength shifts from endurance to honesty. Where we stop outrunning the dark and realise our body has only ever wanted safety, not solutions.

And when the dust settles... because it will... we’ll see that we made it.

Maybe feeling lost is actually our moment of remembering.

Maybe all we ever needed was permission not to have it all figured out.

Maybe being human is just walking each other home through the fog.

You don’t need to find it. It will find you.

10/11/2025

Every journey begins with the body asking, Am I safe?

Before we can love, learn, or change, our nervous system has to ease out of defense mode. When safety is felt, not just understood, our body responds. It becomes available for experience, not just survival.

Yet, safety isn’t just the absence of danger, it’s the presence of rhythm, kindness, and permission.
It’s the quiet signal that says, you don’t have to protect anything right now.

So take a slow breath that belongs only to you.
Feel your shoulders drop. Let yourself unclench from this world even if just for a moment.

And that’s where self-love begins too. The moment you notice you’re disconnected, you’re already reconnecting. Because the very fact that you’re trying means something in you already believes you’re worth it.

Healing and enoughness isn’t becoming more lovable. It’s remembering that you always were.

07/11/2025

I don’t think we quite realise how many people are barely holding on. Not over dramatically, just quietly, competently. But oh so invisibly.

On paper they look fine.
Working. Parenting. Turning up.
Still smiling. Still “keep on, keeping on.”

But underneath it all, their nervous system is running on fumes. It’s doing exactly what it was built to do under this kind of pressure.

Somewhere along the way though, we all got very good at pretending we’re okay. And it’s probably costing us more than most of us will admit.

Read that again if you need to.

Maybe this is your sign to stop pretending you’re doing “fine.”

You don’t have to break to finally stop.
You don’t need a full-on crisis to tell your truth.
You don’t need permission to want a life that actually feels like yours.

So for now… just stop for a moment.
Let it speak.

You know what you need.

04/11/2025

An Unexpected Appointment..

It was the end of a very long day. The clinic had emptied, the receptionist had gone home, and I was about to follow suit when I noticed you sitting quietly in the waiting room. You looked small in that stillness. I invited you in, trying to hide my surprise.

You began with the biggest shopping list of symptoms, fatigue, a recurring illness, but within minutes, real tears were spilling over, breaking through your rehersed composure. “I feel so humbled that you feel safe enough to do that here,” I said. And, that’s when everything changed.

What followed then wasn’t about medicine. It was about a life unraveling, a spouse in constant pain, sleepless nights, mounting debt, and the kind of exhaustion that seeps out of your bones. You wanted something to change but couldn’t see a 'how'.

I offered a short guided meditation, not a treatment as such, just a moment of true stillness. Within minutes, your whole body shifted. You finally exhaled. We began untangling it all, one thread at a time. What felt impossible started to break down into smaller manageable steps that felt kinda doable. In the end we’d mapped a small plan, flexible, kind, and very real.

When you left, I realised I hadn’t even taken your temperature!

Sometimes our most powerful medicine isn’t what we prescribe, it's what we hold, a space safe enough for someone to completely fall apart and then to remember who they already are.

30/10/2025

I think this is the middle of my story. The part where everything finally gets to slow down.

This morning I stood at the kitchen bench,
waiting for the kettle to boil, and realised I wasn’t rushing anywhere. No lists. No one needing anything.

Just the sound of water starting to hum.

It hit me how long I’ve lived this way, how many decades I’ve called this level of overgiving (nursing) normal. And now, in the stillness, my body is finally speaking, asking me to stop trying so hard.

The world I built around being 'useful' (needed) is still there, maybe more than ever, but I move through it differently now. Touch what still feels true, and quietly leave what doesn’t.

Some days I still wake up feeling heavy, some days (most days) I feel clearer now, both feel more honest, truer to where I'm at.

I used to call this resignation a pause, a sabbatical for good behaviour (lol), but it isn’t.
It’s my life now. It’s what I really need.

Rest that doesn’t feel like recovery, but like coming home.

A watched kettle never boils. I think perhaps that’s the lesson.

27/10/2025

If we truly lived every day as if it was our last, everything would change, both profoundly and chaotically.

At first, there’d be this collective exhale. Our masks would drop. The small talk, the pretending, that endless striving for tomorrow, all of it would feel absurd. None of that would actually matter.

We’d stop living half-lives. We’d stop outsourcing 'meaning' to money, status, or external validation.

People would say what they mean, do what they long to, love who they love, and stop apologising for simply being.

Forgiveness would come easier. Gratitude would become like second nature. Every single sunset would feel like an absolute miracle.

But if we know we’re going to eventually die, why do we keep living like we won’t?

That’s it, isn’t it?
We talk about presence, yet rush through our days as if the next one is absolutely guaranteed. We say we value love, yet we keep waiting for the 'right time' to give fully.

Here’s the flip side (there’s always a flip side). Without that illusion of time, structure dissolves. No one plans, saves, or builds beyond the now. Progress might pause. Impulsiveness could take over. The future, once a predictable compass, would completely vanish, and with it those slow, steady acts of care that require so much patience.

The paradox is that we really do need both, the presence of the last day and the promise of another, and vice versa. Life isn’t measured in years, but in how we show up. Most people haven’t lived a single full day, they’ve just been awake for thousands of them.

So breathe intentionally, and let those tears come if they need to.

But, why wait?
Say what’s unsaid.
Forgive or finish what’s unfinished.

And meet life...all of it...as if this were your very last chance to remember who you really are.