My work goes beyond the surface to
meet you at your depths.
“We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are, when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed, and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.”
MARK NEPO
I was 39 when the ground beneath my feet crumbled and my world was turned upside down. I was 5mths pregnant with our second son when my partner tragically took his life. Some events rearrange us in ways we could have never fathomed.
Despite nearly two decades of personal development and spiritual growth, nothing prepared me for this or how it would unravel me. The first two years were a blur of shock and survival, raising my children while barely managing to take care of myself. I was frequently ill, emotionally shattered, and endured repeated burnout, digestive disorders, and biotoxin poisoning that affected my nervous system, heart, and cognition. Recovery took over five years, a lot of inner work and close to $100K when I factor in remediation costs as well.
In the 3rd year I tried to piece myself back together and poured myself into my creative life. I danced, formally studied art and at the end of my training hit my 3rd bout of burnout since my partner’s death, this time it was severe. It would be a year before I learned that the mold was also deeply buried in my brain, causing havoc on every system in the body. I spent the next year laying on the floor, working on myself and learning to feel my body after decades of shutting it down, focusing my attention inwards instead of trying to fix my life ‘out there’. It was a potent time. There is so much to be said for times when life stops us dead in our tracks, and we are forced to look within.
I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by friends who were trauma therapists, who reflected back to me that the adversity I had faced needed more than just talk therapy, and that all of my health issues were linked. l listened and turned to somatics. I worked with a therapist and also immersed myself in my own study. I desperately wanted to heal, I wanted understand my partner’s choice and I wanted to be equipped to support my children who I knew one day would need to process their own experience around their father’s death.
‘The most important work we can do, is to turn our attention inwards and meet our direct experience’
As my understanding of trauma grew, I realised it’s not only ‘situational’ events like suicide, abuse or what my partner had endured from decades as a police diver that are traumatic, but also smaller things that are ‘developmental’ - stemming from ongoing stress, misattunement, and emotional neglect in formative years. These "little things" accumulate in the body, shaping our nervous system, self-perception, worldview, and ability to adapt and cope.
My trauma was developmental, stemming from mis-attunement and unmet emotional needs in a loving but restrictive household. Raised to be silent, a peacekeeper, and a people-pleaser, I disconnected from my authentic self and my emotions. I took that conditioning into my adult life and relationships and abandoned myself to please others, feeling disempowered, unseen and unheard. I believed I didn’t matter, and that I wasn’t enough. I felt trapped, frustrated and reached for coping strategies to mitigate the conflict I felt within. I overworked, overthought, over-exercised, over-spiritualised and pretty much overdid everything to mitigate the lack of agency I felt in my life.
I dealt with chronic stress, TMJ, bulimia, insomnia, and a belief that I needed to shape myself to others’ expectations to receive love and validation. This pattern shaped my health, relationships, and set the stage for later trauma.
The journey home to myself has been one of coming back to my body, and learning how to feel all the things I had been running from. Deeply and courageously.
The depth of my grief, the shock still held in my tissues, the anger I had shut down for years, the fear that was still driving me and the love that exists beneath all of that. Slowly releasing old patterns of avoidance and numbing, and moving away from mind-centred therapeutic interventions that kept me ‘overthinking’ and disconnected from my body, to body-centred inquiry, meeting the stored stress at its roots with compassion, curiosity and love.
I had no idea that this would also be the pathway into knowing my spiritual self deeply. Ending the search outside of myself and instead recognising that all I was seeking was within, I just had to learn how to listen and feel.
The way I now live my life has deepened my connection with my intuition and inner guidance, with what I call the divine, supported me to cultivate fulfilling relationships, made me a better mother, partner and friend, helped me find purpose and direction in my work, and most importantly helped me land in the place I now call home.
My partner’s death was an avalanche in my life, my illness from mold an earthquake to follow; both of these were crises that turned out to be my greatest teachers, leading to my deepest healing and most beautiful awakening.
Adversity, pain and challenges often are if we know how to work with the material that arises in their wake. Reconciling his death, along with the loss of my parents, parenting alone, and restoring my health amidst daily stresses, has taught me much about emotional resilience and the value of doing the work that matters most.
I believe without a doubt, the most important work we can do is this inner work.
Moving out of the habit of trying to think our way out of the struggles we face, and growing the capacity to feel our feelings fully, to release all that we are holding, to open and trust our hearts, honour our inner guidance, express our truth, and be in the world as our fullest, most perfectly imperfect, beautiful, unique selves. This is a worthy quest that I am deeply committed to in my own life, and one that I have devoted my life to facilitating in others.
I’m deeply grateful to the beautiful humans who have trusted me to date with their own unfolding and awakening, and I would feel honoured to walk alongside you too.
Know that you are held by a woman who has been to her depths, and I offer that space to you.
