My Story
Please note this page contains references to childhood sexual abuse and suicidal thoughts.
I was five when I learned that the world wasn't safe.
The woman paid to care for me and her husband abused me sexually, emotionally, physically for years. They threatened me into keeping it a secret and for ten years I did. I carried the heavy weight of the guilt and shame.
By eight I had tremendous OCD and awful nightmares, I was afraid of everything, by thirteen my confidence had gone completely, my life was chaos. By seventeen I could barely get out of bed. I saw many doctors, healers and alternative therapists who gave me labels and prescriptions and told me depression was the best I could expect from my life as I had a “chemical imbalance”, the same label they had given my mother. I believed them. Why wouldn't I? They were the adults, they were the trusted authority.
By nineteen, suicide crossed my mind daily. I tell you this not for sympathy. I need you to understand where I started, so you understand what I know to be true about where you can go.
At twenty one I moved to Barcelona. I fell in love. I was creative and pursued art, graphic design and was part of a wonderfully creative scene. For the first time I let myself feel joy. Then my father was diagnosed with cancer. He was give one year to live but he survived another thirteen years and endured over sixty surgeries. Watching him deteriorate felt like confirmation of something I had always feared: nothing good ever stays.
And then everything changed. My mother’s friend found an advertisement in the back of Chat magazine for something called Cognitive Hypnotherapy. She booked in a session with its creator. I went with low expectations.
That single decision changed everything, that session blew my mind. For the first time I began to understand how to speak to my subconscious. How to rewire what I believed and for the first time I saw the truth clearly:
I wasn’t broken. I just had never learnt to trust myself.
I had been taught to trust people who failed me, authority figures who pathologised my pain, silenced my voice and confused help and harm. Everything I had believed about myself that I was destined for hardship, that I was too much, that I was damaged it wasn't true, they were stories trying their best to keep me safe.
Learning to rewrite those stories was the beginning of everything. I stopped chasing perfection as protection. I built safety inside myself. I stopped seeing my past as proof that I was doomed and started seeing it as proof that I was powerful.
Now I live a life I once couldn't let myself imagine. I am loved, I have the dog I dreamed of as a child, I share my life with a partner who inspires me, grounds me and makes me laugh. We make our meditations together in his studio. I have built a business that makes my heart proud and every single day I help women who believe what I once believed that they are broken beyond repair find their way back to themselves.
Change is real. Healing is possible. I have lived it.
Your story might feel heavy or impossible right now. But it can become a source of strength. Your mind is not fixed. Your nervous system is not doomed. You are not your diagnosis or your past.
