Born a creative Being: the daughter of an artist and a man who loved music, I drew and painted a lot as a child. It dried up around the age of 10 and I stopped expressing myself in that way. I guess now as I look back, I locked the creative aspect of my being deep down inside. She was ashamed of this expression, too sensitive, too empathic, not strong enough to be in this world. She needed to be more “normal” and fit in or would not survive. I studied music in school and continued to believe that art could not, and would not be expressed through me.
I rebelled massively in my teenage years then spent from 18-24 estranged from my family. I entered the world of music and the dance floor for recreation. I worked in pubs. I raved, I got out of my head, I existed to party.
On the dance floor I was free. Everyone around me was free too. The music, the primal beats, the energy was so uplifting. I didn’t have to care about anything other than BEing. Music and the rave was all there was and all that needed to be.
I saw colours when I moved, I reached higher planes of existence. I could feel the music deep inside. I wanted that, I needed that. To feel something that didn’t hurt or need to be avoided like the pain I was holding onto. The hangovers were unbelievable but it didn’t matter. I partied with DJ’s,.... I even spun the decks briefly myself :) I lived for the music and the music lived me.
I left the dance scene some years later and moved abroad where I met my husband and got married. I settled down, got serious about life and being a wife, to see where that journey would take me.
Art and music collided for me as therapy, quite accidentally, after a physical and emotional breakdown in my early 30’s. I had been over giving at a job, and my beloved canine companion suddenly died. I felt lost and broken. I was deeply depressed. My North Star, my purpose, my care for living had gone.
Expression as art came back to me this time in a different format. It came to heal me from a higher perspective. My journey initially was a very personal experience and process of self enquiry, activated by a very deep spiritual experience in the pits of this depression that I really have no words for. It was a full on awakening that shook me in every cell of my being. Whilst in this awakening, I created a snow sculpture of my dog as a memorial, I collaged her on a giant photo board. I started using paints and canvases to pour my feelings of grief onto. The images I was expressing onto canvas at this point made no rational sense, but it didn't matter. The feelings that were freed up and let go of was all that was needed.
I then began to express art, movement and dance to music as a daily practice. I was driven by a force again that wanted to be free. Music was my guiding light. My body and its movements were stirring the feelings that were ready to be expressed. My hands, tears and creations were my emotional release.
I reached inside and just let it come outside onto the canvas. Beyond the grief, everything that I had ever felt and experienced came up and out with it. Sometimes quite literally thrown at the canvas! Many house walls have had to be touched up and new cushion covers purchased along the way. :)
I got deeply in touch with all of my pain, my suffering, my loss.
I spent two full years as a bodywork patient attending sessions three times a week to learn how to tap into my body's wisdom and knowing. To understand and unravel the mystery of me. To learn how to work with the body and emotional system even deeper as well as the art via expression of the hands.
I was then initiated into Reiki. I studied Shamanism and Jungian psychology, I trained to be a Chakradance Facilitator and a circle facilitator with Global Sisterhood. I trained to be a Color of Woman Intentional Creativity Teacher.
I joined Priestess Presence mystery school as an initiate, and have spent the last 17 years deeply excavating myself and immersing myself in what healing really is. Meeting my own shadow material over and over again and learning how to hold healing space. How to bridge the worlds in myself and be a witness to others.
Now, I guide women to step into their pain as I did through music, movement, art and ritual. To trust it, not avoid it. To allow it voice and energy. To let it go.
I portal access and hold space for them to step through a door that spirit opened for me at my darkest point.
So beloved reader. Would you take my loving, outstretched hands in the now as I ask you to step forward into the ride of your life?