My mess became my message
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The story of your beginning

Imagine being on a boat that unexpectedly starts to let water in? Imagine the boat was about to sink and was filling with water fast. Imagine the panic and total confusion that you would be plunged into without fully knowing why? Boats do not sink because of the water around them, it’s the water that gets in them that pulls them down. One of the first things you would hope for, to get you to safety, is a life raft. Now imagine you are just a child when this happens? And the boat is your life? How would you get to the safety of the shore or the banking? How would you make sense of what has happened? You see in life, its not actually what happens to us that causes a fragmented sense of self, it’s the personal meaning we give to the experience, inside our body and mind. Its how we perceive the event on the inside from our own unique sense of reality. And a lot of the time things happen before we have the complex and critical thinking ability to make sense of, or to fully understand, what has happened.
We can then carry that sense of confusion, of chaos inside us every day without ever really understanding what is causing it. I know because I lived like this for almost 4 decades. There was no life raft, no place of safety. The experiences of the past and my decisions about what they meant, were dragging me beneath the surface and continually causing me to feel like I was drowning. I became so detached and distant from who I was. I had spent all my life fitting in yet never felt like I belonged anywhere. From the skin in I was avoiding everything I had experienced by self-soothing using any means possible. I grew up in a household with a parent who was struggling with trauma and using alcohol to cope. Just like the generation before her and the one before that. I experienced childhood abuse and found coping strategies that included substances, and behaviours of avoidance, that ultimately kept me alive. I experienced adulthood through the lens of a frightened child and life had become a heavy mess. A brush with death in 1999 shocked me to sit up and take responsibility for who I had become.

I am who I am because of the events I have lived through NOT in spite of them.

However, the first thing I had to do was suss out who that was. I spent the first 10 year of that journey learning everything I could and designing “My RAFT”. I sought out and challenged the lie in every belief I had internalised and fostered a “Win or learn” approach.

I studied, researched, and started to make sense of this gift we call life. This journey sent me back into education. Seen me starting my own business, traveling across continents, standing on stages, writing books, making a documentary, and working with some of the most amazing minds in the world of the subjects that interest me.

I have now pulled all this together and developed an approach to trauma recovery, that might just be what you are looking for. I’ve used all of the skills and tools from the life I had, to create the life I have. My once deeply hidden battle scars are now my proudly displayed badges of honour and I can support you to do the same.

Are you ready to create a life full of connection and worth? Or are you like most people, and do not attempt to tackle this work as its hard, ugly and uncomfortable.

If you are ready to understand yourself… I am ready to hold space for you.

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