About me

My story

I still remember the first moment I truly landed in my body. Where instead of trying to get away from all its intense sensations, I was willing to feel it all. To really be there for all of it.

It was when I first learned I was pregnant with my son Arthur. 

Motherhood has been my initiation into embodiment and into the path of the medicine woman. When I began tuning into my body, I discovered a confidence and sense of instinctual truth that cut through all my mental chatter. The reverence I felt for my body as my son grew within me was so immense and led me to study embryology and birth to understand the biological design for human life. The guidance was clear and in March 2021 I gave birth at home without any medical assistance. It was me and my boy working as a team to bring him safely into the world outside my body. It was the most empowering initiation of my life. 

Amidst the COVID pandemic, stuck on the opposite side of the world from my family, in an unstable relationship and with a history of mental illness, I was deeply dedicated to doing everything I could to support us to thrive despite adversity. You can say it became my “special interest” that I was rather obsessed with… What I arrived at was this - if I wanted to meet Arthur’s needs, I had to connect to my mammal nature. To my deeply biological, embodied nurturing instincts. To surrender to them. It became my goal for the first year of his life. 

In the weeks after my son was born it became clear to me he was highly sensitive, just like me. He was highly alert and expressive and needed me close so so much to help him feel safe and relaxed. My intense research continued listening to audiobooks and podcasts as I walked for hours each day with him in the carrier to help him rest while regulating myself through movement and nature connection. I truly thought that if I tried hard enough that I could prevent him from the trauma, mental illness and adversity I had experienced growing up. I recognise now how naive that was. There will always be suffering and challenges in life. But if we can meet those challenges from a place of resilience, then they can empower rather than overpower us. 

I decided to step onto the path of the healer and certified as a trauma therapist with Havening Techniques®.  

Fast-forward 18 months and I was now a solo parent. I hadn’t had more than 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep since my son was born. His eczema was disturbing him day and night no matter what we tried. I was on the edge of burn-out and full of grief at the relationship with his dad not working out. I made the difficult decision to leave Canada and move back to New Zealand to be closer to my family and have access to more support.

A few weeks after we arrived, I crossed paths with neuroscientist and embryologist Dr Stephanie Mines who developed the TARA Approach for the resolution of shock and trauma. She immediately recognised what imbalances were behind Arthur’s eczema, applied a few moments of touch to his legs and the next day it was half gone!

Fascinated, I immediately became her student and stepped into the rich worlds of traditional eastern medicine, psycho-emotional neuroscience, pre and perinatal psychology and innovative new understandings of memory, attachment and developmental trauma. I learned about how our experiences in the first environment (womb), birth and the first year in the world profoundly shape us, and a process for recalling these memories to address long-standing limiting patterns (The Rediscovery Journey). 

Before long, I was motivated to deepen these studies into a Masters in Regenerative Health. The whole time I continued to use my hands to give energy medicine treatments for me and my son. I observed my nervous system coming out of overwhelm. The sensory issues I’d dealt with my whole life were fading into the background. I didn’t have to be in control all the time anymore. Arthur and I began to sleep easily and deeply. For the first time I had the sense that I could really meet my intense emotions without fear of coming undone. My favorite time of day began to be when Arthur would fall asleep and I could lay beside him and breathe and tune into myself using my hands and attentive presence. As someone who had spent her whole life unable to lie in the dark with myself and relax, this was almost miraculous. I felt at peace with myself which was such a novel experience. 

The deeper I went into my self-healing and research, the more I could see how our dominant (Western) culture is one of disconnection and dissociation. Living in our heads rather than our bodies, performing vs authentically connecting. And we have systematically undermined mothering and the mother-child relationship, to the detriment of multiple generations now. It is said that now women can “have it all”, but what I see is that actually now women have to “do it all”. Maintain a career, and parent, and take care of the house all at the same time. And we’ve messed with the inherent resilience of nature’s design for birth and beyond as well. It is no surprise to me that rates of post-partum depression and anxiety keep rising. 

My sincere and clear intention is to play my part in breaking this cycle. To bring empowering resources to mums and their children in this chaotic world that allows a restoration of wholeness and aliveness.

It begins with you. You choosing to care for yourself alongside your child. That you are equally worthy of nurturance and attention.

My training