I think I felt we could do better as people watching my father. He was pathologically and dangerously violent. Even as a little girl, maybe 4 or 5 years old, I would look at him and think "I know this isn't who he is.......I know somewhere inside of him is a good person.......but something happened to him to make him the way he is." I wasn't safe in a room alone with him, yet I just instinctively knew he couldn't have been born that way.
My mother was brilliant, wise and courageous, and inspired me hugely, but she wasn’t always well.
School was my favourite place to be, and also the safest. I put all my love and time and attention into it and thrived there.
I was fascinated by health, medicine and the body. I wanted to understand how substances in the body change the way it works – and to me medicine was the strongest example of how that happens. I spent years working part-time in a chemist, and decided I would become a Pharmacist.
At 18 I went to University to study Pharmacy. I went to Manchester, a party city in the days of the famous Hacienda, so it was no surprise that I failed my first year exams, even though my love of my subject hadn’t waned. My first ever panic attack happened in a resit and meant that I had to repeat my first year. I settled down, worked hard, was bright enough, but just couldn’t make it through the exams again. I have come to believe that had I completed my studies as a Pharmacist, and was a Pharmacist now, I wouldn’t see and understand what I share in my work, so my feeling is that life was taking me in other directions to learn all I needed to learn that I share in all of the work that I do.
I then studied Psychology, working with people with severe mental health problems for a time after I graduated before I became a training specialist. It's another passion for me – seeing people have those “aha!” eureka moments when they realise what they are truly capable of and how amazing they are. I worked in the education, charity and corporate sectors, training people in all sorts of areas - soft skills, management skills, leadership skills, disability awareness, strengths awareness and training trainers.
Shortly after I finished University, my Mum died of cancer. It was one of the saddest times of my life, but amazing things started to happen. She would appear in my dreams whilst I was sleeping and tell me things I couldn't have possibly have known when she was alive - things I would then look into and find to be true. It was the start of my becoming consciously aware of a "something else" - something beyond what we can see with our physical eyes and feel as physical matter. I read Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch, and my whole world opened. I studied spiritual courses and learned about energy and healing.
My interest in health, however, has stayed with me throughout my life. I was fascinated by the pictures of the map of the body depicted on the soles of the feet that led me to learn Reflexology, not long after I graduated from University.
When I began my Reflexology course, I had never even had a treatment or met anyone who had, I just wanted to understand what that map of the body on the feet was about, and the professional course wasn’t much more than the introduction, so I thought I might as well give it a go. On the second week of the course, something happened that transformed by understanding of health, anatomy, physiology and science. We were taught about the spine. The spine, when you look at where it is represented in the feet, runs along the inside of each foot – along the length of each foot where your feet, when you put them together, meet. The amazing thing is that it looks exactly like a miniature version of the spine in your back. It is shaped, and curved in exactly the same proportions as the spine in your back. And, when you apply gentle pressure to it, as we were taught to do, you can count what feel like tiny little fish bones in the feet – these represent each of the individual vertebrae in the spine.
I thought this was incredible. I rushed home, and pinned down the first friend I saw into an armchair to give it another go on someone outside of my class. This person happens to have a scoliosis, an S-shaped curve in the back - which I had actually forgotten about until after I had applied the reflexology technique to their feet. Whilst gently "working on" the spine through this person's foot, I could map out and feel an S-shaped curve in the spine area of the foot – which was precisely in the same place, to the relatively same degree of curvature as the S shape in this person’s spine in their back. My eyes nearly popped out of my head with amazement, excitement and wonder.
This was when I realised that true models of health and medicine are more holistic, and that what I had been taught at school and in my Pharmacy degree was only part of the picture of what maintains health and treats disease. There is increasing evidence that proves that disease can be treated in many ways, including using natural medicines, energy, meditation, intention, and the mind.
My fascination with the influence of substances on the body, especially medicine, remained. I chose to study to become a homeopath, which I have found to be remarkable, and am in awe of this amazing medicine. I am blessed to lead the Golden Spiral Provings Collective - a group of some of the most remarkable, inspiring world leaders in homeopathy, where we test new remedies to meet the needs of an evolving world.
Some of these remarkable homeopaths have joined me as guest tutors at the Golden Spiral International School of Homeopathy. I realised that it was time to bring together my love of teaching, energy work, transformational work and homeopathy all into one program - training the next generation of homeopaths.
I faced the greatest challenge of my life when my then 11 year old son, who I adore, was taken from me by my abusive ex using the Courts for a year. He used simple techniques that are now commonly used by narcissists and abusers to take children from loving parents using Family Courts around the world. I learned a huge amount I hadn’t understood about the Family Court system, domestic abuse, narcissism, and the total inadequacy of the Family Courts to understand how to respond to the needs of separated families where abuse is involved. I discovered the power and gift of Family Constellations, and in the process how Judges in courtrooms in Brazil and now Mexico have been using Family Constellations to be able to support separated families with compassion, wisdom, truth, insight and putting the needs of the children 100% at the heart of the decisions that are made. I now also campaign for change that loves children and families, as part of my commitment to being part of helping to build a better world.
At heart, I am still a festival-loving old school raver who loves people, Star Wars and Harry Potter, who adores seeing the wonderful random acts of kindness people do for one another every day, who believes we can all do better in our own lives and do better for our planet, whilst still having fun, sharing the love and making the world a better place.
I’m neurodiverse, and think creatively “outside the box”. I look for patterns - including in how we are making the world a better place. I think love can be seen everywhere when we turn our attention to it......part of what I love to do is to find it in the unlikely places to show how much our world IS changing and transforming in wonderful ways.
A bit about my story…..
I am passionate about all that I do......but ultimately for me what I believe in is a better world. I know we are building it, I see that in the innovations and choices people make about living a life of love at work, with their families, in how they spend their money, in who and how they choose to love. More and more of us are choosing to build a world where everyone thrives, not just a few; where everyone matters.
I have learned a lot from the life I have lived that makes me know this is possible.