Hey There 

Back in 2014, I was stood in the master bedroom of my husband and I's newly purchased first home, paint brush

in hand, tears silently streaming down my face. Queens ‘I’m going slightly mad’ ironically played on the radio.

 

For anyone looking in, I had the perfect life.

 

Great job, amazing (and gorgeous) partner, a home to call my own (in London!!), friends, family. Every 'check box' was ticked, but on the inside was a very different story.

 

I felt like an empty shell, broken, living a lie and feeling like a b**ch for not being grateful for all I had.  

 

So here I was, stood in our bedroom. 

 

I’d just come home from a CBT session where my therapist had cut the session short and instructed me to go straight to A&E because I was ‘in crisis.’ 

 

I hadn't. Instead, I'd gone home and painted my bedroom. Something I realised I'd metaphorically been doing my whole life, making superficial changes, ensuring everything looked perfect, 'just as it should' for fear of exposing the cracks beneath. 

 

Over the next few days and weeks, it felt like pieces of me were splintering and shattering away as I descended into a very dark place for the third time in my life.

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But this was a breakdown that was to be my greatest breakthrough. My unbecoming. 

The culmination of fifteen years of crippling anxiety, depression and self harm that had manifested in so many ways; cutting, over eating, starvation, excessive drinking, excessive exercise, agoraphobia and shutting myself away from the world, or was it myself??

 

I believed I was utterly broken beyond repair. 

But I wasn’t, no-one is.

 

I'd simply lost my way, forgotten who I was in the midst of twisting and contorting myself out of shape to fit others ideals, societies ‘tick’ boxes of what success ‘should’' look like. These constant pressures of shoulds and musts bearing down eroded my soul, creating a chasm, a void deep inside me that I hopelessly tried to fill.

 

It was this unravelling, this unbecoming that has enabled me to become the woman I am today. A woman I've learned to know and love deeply. A woman who has accomplished things I never dreamt myself capable of. A woman who doesn't get it right all the time (far from it) and certainly doesn't have all her sh*t together, but a woman who loves deeply and lives freely. 

 

It is my deepest wish that the sharing of my own experiences and learnings will give hope and perhaps an alternative perspectives to other souls who find themselves, lost, struggling or seeking a deeper connection to the world around them.

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Having spent many years searching for my purpose in life, it has dawned on me that my only purpose is to do what I love and share that with the world and so here I am, a writer, speaker and guide, shining this little light of mine.

 

I hope that my work encourages you to take a peek under your own hood and perhaps even venture through the looking glass to what lies beyond because as my favourite mug reminds each morning....

 

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