My story
I appreciate you taking the time to learn more about me and my story.
For most of my life, I've been called to support others in their own growth, whether in coaching, writing, speaking or teaching - and I thrive in this work.
However, my journey to this place has not always been filled with joy, peace, confidence and all those other good feelings we all desire.
In sharing my story I hope to offer you insight into the changes that are possible when you re-discover your sacred and sensual power and begin to experience life in all its glory and lushness.
My early years were delightful.
Pinned to a cork board on my desk is my very first school report, aged 5.
My teachers describe me as enthusiastic, a pleasure to have in class and "always tries hard". I remember with great delight learning to read, playing with coloured blocks, seeing the tadpoles in our school pond grow and become frogs.
When I was still little, an adult asked me: "What do you want to be when you grow up?". Without thinking, I answered: "Happy!"
That was the wrong answer for a world focused on results, not feelings.
As I got older, things felt harder and harder. Rather than freedom to focus on feeling happy, I found myself swallowed up by experiences and structures which restricted my joy.
At age 11, after several emotionally turbulent years for my family, my parents divorced. That same year, I enrolled in a strict, results-focused secondary school.
My mind felt overloaded and I spent early teenage-hood exhausted and lacking in emotional vocabulary to express how I was feeling. I was experiencing severe executive dysfunction: one of the signs of ADHD that wouldn't be diagnosed until I was 35.
In frustration, I rebelled, in all the classic teenage ways, including having my first 'proper' boyfriend at 15.
Then at 16, I experienced in-relationship rape.
These first teenage experiences shaped my life for years to come.
Lacking emotional awareness or adequate support, in an educational institution that overworked me, suffering from the aftermath of multiple personal traumas, I found myself going deeper into difficult psychological territory.
At university I became mentally very unwell. Suicidal ideation was normal, as was starving myself, drinking heavily and taking lots of romantic risks. My family relationships broke down and I struggled to maintain friendships.
Learning was my haven, yet as I progressed through to postgraduate studies, I floundered. The simple joys I'd found as a child felt very far away, disguised by layers of pain and frustration generated by trauma.
In an attempt to find something to move towards that would bring me the happiness and meaning I so craved, I chose to focus on the values which had been driven into me by my schooling and upbringing: "work hard, be successful, achieve status".
I threw myself into every professional opportunity, frequently overworking and suffering with poor health. I ended up in marketing, using my abundant creative abilities to sell people stuff they didn't need with reasons that weren't really true. It helped me feel useful, secure, successful.
But it was also completely soul-sucking.
In an attempt to carve out time to think and grow, I flew off on a two month solo sabbatical where I travelled to Japan, China, South East Asia and Australia. On my return, I made a decision.
I couldn't keep pushing myself to the brink of burnout just so I felt like I deserved to be on the planet.
I couldn't keep ignoring how I really felt about who I was, what I had experienced, the relationships I wanted to have and the identity I was coming to terms with.
I couldn't keep pretending that this was what I wanted. That this was all there was to life.
So I quit my job and started working for myself.
And I kept on doing exactly as I did before.
People will often say working for themselves set them free. For me, it only put me in a tighter cage, this time of my own design.
I was the worst boss I had ever had. I knew all the things to say to myself to keep me working incessantly, avoiding the trauma aftermath that I really needed to address, and convincing myself that unless I gave and gave and gave, I was worthless.
The result was, at 30, I had a breakdown.
To put it kindly: I went a bit mad, journeyed deeper than ever before with my healing, ignored my business, wept like a baby during a shamanic sound bath, had a vision in a room full of 400 people, and ended the year by dramatically trashing a four-year relationship.
And at 30, I had my breakthrough.
Trauma had taught me that reaching for others ended in pain. So I cut myself from others ... until I was so desperate for love and joy I attached myself to anyone and anything that showed the slightest bit of interest.
I had engaged with an expansive toolkit of cognitive and neurological healing to reach this point of awareness, but that healing wasn't enough to carry me forward.
My breakdown (and through) showed me that there were more paths to take to propel me into the life I truly desired: one of joy, pleasure, ease and satisfaction.
These paths weren't going to be paved by my mind.
They would be paved by my body and soul.
The source of the child-like happiness I had sought to revive for so long was already within me, buried under the trauma ...
... embedded in my body and soul in my sensual power and sacred perspective.
This revelation started my journey along a new path, leading me to explore modalities of healing and expression which reconnect us to our sacred and sensual experiences.
It's led me to a life where I experience the joy of purely existing every single day.
And it's my honour to share my tools, techniques and processes with you so this becomes your experience.
These tools and processes reawaken your body's wisdom and creative energy: the sensual power at the root of your physical interactions with reality.
They restore the joy, peace, confidence and harmony that is your inherent state of being: the sacred perspective at the source of your self.
And after days, months or decades of pleasing other people, ticking their boxes, staying safe, never letting your fullest expression be free ...
... my tools, techniques and processes help you reclaim your life.