LET ME TELL YOU A STORY...

FROM ADRENALINE JUNKIE TO COACH & GUIDE FOR VISIONARY OUTSIDERS

THE DRAMATIC ENTRANCE AND THE ROLLERCOASTER LIFE

I was born feet first under a full moon in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm.

(Talk about foreshadowing the life I was about to live!)

The trailers of "The Movie of My Life" include skydiving over Las Vegas, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, and flying the trapeze. The highlights reel shows 64 countries, five careers (including solo businesses), four mountain summits, three broken hearts, two dead parents, one near-death experience, and a life of wild experiments and risky moves.

It looked like freedom. Adventure. Courage. Success.

But the trailers didn't show was a grieving child (my dad died when I was 7). An emotionally abused teenager furious at life. A young adult making rebellious choices, the Black Sheep, the outsider. And a grown woman determined not to let her past define her future (yet it did). Constantly moving, constantly reinventing, constantly chasing the buzz of feeling alive, looking for answers without even knowing the questions. 

THE DECADES LIVING IN SURVIVAL MODE

In my 20s, I partied hard and to be honest it's a blur, so we should probably skip this decade!

(I was learning how to numb, and using my body as a nightclub was how I enjoyed doing it most)

In my 30s, I took a leap of faith to follow my passion for travel and left a successful career in graphic design. I funded an eight-month, around-the-world backpacking adventure on credit cards (summed up by a woman I met at a black-jack table in Vegas who said, "You travelled around the world, and you charged it?!"). I'd been terrified of travelling solo, but with every mile, my confidence grew. I made friends in places I couldn’t pronounce and discovered courage I didn’t know I had. 

Later, I turned that leap of faith into a career as an adventure travel tour leader, travelling full-time for five years and becoming the second-highest-rated guide in the company.

(What I didn’t realise at the time was that courage and fear can live side by side. And that true resilience doesn't come from outrunning fear, but from learning to feel safe in your own body, which at the time I didn't)

In my 40s, I walked away from a high-level travel product manager position generating annual revenues of $1.3M for the company to pursue photography, a hobby that had gotten out of hand, fulfilling a deep need for creative expression. I hosted my first workshop for three attendees, feeling like a total imposter. But I kept going, honing my skills, regularly facing the fear of judgment and dealing with self-doubt, but trusting the process while building my reputation. I even published two books.

That love for photography turned into a decade-long career as a multi-award-winning internationally recognised photographer, and a teacher to 100s of students.

(I didn’t know it then, but I was still running on adrenaline. Every one of these career changing moves looked like freedom from the outside. But inside, I was hyper-vigilant, anxious about my health, overthinking, tortured by ruminating thoughts, frustrated that I wasn't where I wanted to be, ashamed I didn't feel fulfilled by the life I had and guilty that I wanted more.) 

THE REALISATION OF THE "HEALING JOURNEY LOOP"

In my 50s, I found myself feeling stuck and deeply unfulfilled. I'd already spent a lifetime exploring the mind, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, manifestation, metaphysics... I'd read the self-help books, spent a year in therapy, and practiced the affirmations, and still wasn't where I'd hoped I would be.

I was stuck in "the healing journey loop". And the clock was ticking. I knew there was more to life than the life I was living. And I knew it was time to shake things up again. Another risky move was loading!

So, in a state of high anxiety in the guise of "I'm doing this to honour my dead dad because he didn't get to live beyond the age I'm at now" - I gave up my home and left the country of my birth to go on a European adventure, intending to settle after a few months... but that journey turned into three years on the road, with no going back.

(I realised that my entire life had been lived in survival mode, cycling through fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. I was living with C-PTSD - if you want to stick a label on it. And because my nervous system was on constant high alert I had no foundation to build a new life on. My identity was dependant on adrenaline, and like any junkie I got my hit where I could.)  

THE BREAKTHROUGH

What had started as another wild experiment and risky move became something deeper... It became an inner journey with more "dark nights of the soul" than you could throw a journal at!

I had to finally admit to myself that it was time to ask for help. My inner warrior, resisted because she'd been doing it alone for so long. So I worked with coaches and hypnotists, as I continued to work on myself consuming knowledge and information (new addiction maybe?). But I began to experience bigger shifts than ever before. I began to feel different. I loved the power of combining neuroscience with spirituality. So much so that I trained to become a transformational coach, and an EFT, NLP and hypnosis practitioner.

🪩 I discovered nervous system regulation.

🪩 I learned subconscious rewiring.

🪩 I practiced somatic healing.

And for the first time in my life, I wasn't just understanding the trauma I'd collected throughout my life and its impact on my wellbeing... I was actually healing it.

Through the healing, I realised that true freedom is peace. And not the sitting-in-the-lotus-position kind! But an inner peace that made taking action towards my dreams and my purpose feel possible, and most importantly safe.

And that's why I created the process of Neuro-Emotional Wisdom™.

Because if I can guide you along this road, and help you skip a few decades of the hard way around, then every single one of my wild experiments, risky moves, and dark nights of the soul will have been worth it. 

(Full disclosure: life is a work-in-progress because each new level brings new challenges as we have to move once again from safe familiarity to the unknown, but when you have the tools of Neuro-Emotional Wisdom™ you have resilience to what life presents you with, you can quickly reset when you need to, go deeper to heal triggers when you can, and increase your emotional wealth and live a life powered by peace.)