Meet Pearl: Program Everything, Always Repeat, Loop
Why your inner critic isn’t the truth — just a loop you can interrupt
For a while now, I’ve been meaning to share more here about how Tilda’s journey in the novel can be applied practically to your own life. And then, as life tends to do, my own took a few unexpected twists and turns — or perhaps more accurately, a few spirals.
I called this Substack The Spiral because life doesn’t move in straight lines. It moves in loops, circling back to familiar themes, but each time at a deeper level of truth. Tilda Is Visible was inspired by my own journey, yet over the past eighteen months I found myself on another deep loop — the same lessons, the same patterns, but seen from a new perspective. What came with that was deeper healing.
I was called upon to dig further in, to sit with discomfort, and to face some hard truths about this strange, beautiful reality ride.
During this time, Pearl once again made herself known. Some of my more enduring patterns and deep-seated inner dialogues grew louder. This was partly due to circumstance — but mostly it was because I stopped meditating for a few months.
I know I push meditation like I’m a med-dealer or an Amway rep, but it genuinely changes the nature of your inner Pearl. Anyway, I’ve been back on the mat for a couple of months now, and Pearl is back in her place. She’s not running the show, I am.
For those who don’t know, Pearl is the name I gave Tilda’s inner voice — her inner dialogue. It’s an acronym: Program Everything. Always Repeat. Loop. Because that’s exactly what it does.
As I wrote in Tilda is Visible:
“Selma turned her notebook to a fresh page and, using a red pen, scrawled:
PEARL – Acronym for Program Everything and Always Repeat Loop.
Then using her pen to point at the words. ‘Ninety-five per cent of what you think every single day is from a record of your past. Everything you’ve ever experienced, ever thought and ever felt, is stored here, in what I call PEARL. She is the subconscious, a massive data bank of information. She’s extremely literal. She doesn’t analyse the information she stores. That’s not her purpose. She’s just a program of your past, tagging information and feeding it back to you on a constant loop, whether that information is actually helpful or not, or true or false.’
Tilda stared at the word PEARL on the notepad and tried to wrap her head around everything Selma was saying. ‘Why do you call her nasty? If PEARL records everything, then doesn’t she record the good as well as the bad?’
Selma’s eyes lit up, as if Tilda were a child, catching on to an important lesson. ‘Yes, but like the supercomputer she is, PEARL recognises patterns of information, so despite memorising everything, she will prioritise information she deems a match to previous data. So, if you’ve experienced trauma as a child, and continued having negative experiences in your life, the program that PEARL feeds back is influenced by that. Does this all make sense?’
Unfortunately, it did. ‘This PEARL has been recording information since I was a child?’
‘Yes. In fact, before you were born. By the age of seven, most of her major programs were installed.’
Tilda felt ill. ‘If you’d met my parents, you’d know that’s very bad news for me.’
‘You’re not alone there, dear.’ Selma gave her a wry smile. ‘PEARL knows “you” and feeds you a loop of thoughts and internal conversations that feel familiar, no matter how awful they are. PEARL reminds you of who you are, and anything outside those known programs will create discomfort.’ She tapped the notepad to make her point. ‘How you see yourself. How you see the world. All the conversations you have with yourself are programmed in PEARL.’
Tilda’s brain hurt. Or maybe that was PEARL. It was a lot to take in.
In Tilda Is Visible, Tilda’s Pearl doesn’t disappear — she evolves. Over time, she even becomes Tilda’s cheerleader.
The same has been true for me.
When I first became conscious of my inner critic, it felt like being thrown back into the schoolyard, with the most relentless bully suddenly laser-focused on me. Brutal. Cruel. Unforgiving. What shocked me most was the realisation that this voice wasn’t coming from someone else. It was me, bullying myself.
Over the coming weeks, I’m going to share a series of practical exercises to support you on your own journey this year — tools to help you notice your inner programming and gently begin to rewire it, so it works for you, rather than against you.
These posts are evergreen, but only for paid subscribers. You can start this process whenever you’re ready. But my hope is that when you look back on 2026, you’ll be able to see just how far you’ve come — simply by walking the same spiral Tilda does in the novel. For my free subscribers, I’ll still include you in the bi-annual 10-day Meditation Challenge. The first one is in February.
But first, Pearl! Today, we’re starting with three simple steps.
