Wellness with Heart Award

1.     What inspired you to champion wellness and healing?

 Even as a child, I was the little family therapist- born emotionally sensitive, with a big heart and in my teens drawn to psychology and self-help books with a deep desire to irradicate human suffering. My whole life people have always naturally gravitated toward me – “Moths to a flame” as my parents would say – for comfort and understanding. My mum was raised in a strict Catholic family so when she fell pregnant with me at sixteen in a small-town shame clung to us tightly living with the constant weight of stigma. My grandma always called me an old soul, she believed that I had been here before and I grew up fast.

My childhood was filled with worry my parents were strict authoritarian and my stepfather was harsh and punitive dismissing my empathy as weakness always trying to toughen me up by being cruel. At school I was bullied for being fat and sensitive and kids would try and throw cigarettes in my long hair. Despite this, kids and adults still sought me out to help them navigate their life dilemmas and pain. In time I came to understand that this pattern of helping people from such a young age would latter become my life calling and purpose. My capacity to attract others and to hold space for their suffering evolved into more than just instinct in became my vocation.

Interestingly, as many counsellors will tell you most enter the industry through their own adversity with a hope to transform their pain into purpose and help others. This is the essence of the wounded healer archetype; The idea that our own wounds become our greatest source of empathy and healing. Carl Jung believed that healers are compelled to help because they themselves have been wounded and that their own hurt gives measure to their capacity to heal others. My sensitivity once scorned became my gift it enabled me to sit with others in their darkness and gently guide them toward the light, simply by being present. My natural magnetism of drawing people in and helping them became my foundation to becoming a counsellor. Today I champion wellness because I know the power of being seen, heard and held. My journey from shame to purpose fuels my passion. My mission is always to be a healing anchor in someone’s darkness - proof that even from the hardest beginnings light, connection and transformation can emerge.

2.     Tell us about a breakthrough moment in helping others feel whole.

In my work as a counsellor, I often meet people who are fragmented. They aren’t just hurting and sad they are frozen in time locked in a moment of traumatic grief and loss that is so debilitating to process which consumes them whole making their world and life a living nightmare. During my academic journey before I became a professional counsellor, I had a breakthrough moment helping a friend suffering with suicidality, whose baby had died five years prior. My friend truly believed that she was responsible for her baby’s death and though she had since had another child her grief was still disenfranchised. She was using drugs to cope still overwhelmed with guilt and struggling to be fully present for her living child, not feeling she deserved to be a mother again and worrying this baby would die too.

Unable to acknowledge the depth of her loss my friend had not even began the grieving process, still being stuck in the shock of the trauma of her loss. She began self-medicating tangled in shame and doctor shopping. As a counsellor in training and research I discovered that my friend was experiencing Complicated Grief - a complex and debilitating grief disorder that is so debilitating that it intensifies daily and does not lesson over time often caused by a traumatic loss making it impossible to function and usually leading Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As I began to help my friend work through the stages of grief, she began to understand that grief is love with nowhere to go and her pain was never a flaw it was love still alive with nowhere to land. “Grief is the price you pay for loving so much” - David Kessler.

Little by little my friend began to soften and overtime she began to feel whole again. As I helped my friend navigate her grief and honour her pain she began to heal. She realised she was never meant to move on or forget her deceased baby and as she began to hold her pain more lightly, she was able to grow around her grief create a new normal continuing the bond honouring her lost baby while loving and caring for the child in front of her. That is what healing looks like. My friend got sober and began showing up for her child becoming the mother she always knew she was meant to be.

3.     What philosophy drives your approach to wellbeing?

When it comes to wellbeing as a counsellor and fellow human being it is all about meeting people where they are and supporting their journey towards feeling more balanced and whole. I believe wellness is not about being perfect or fixed but about learning to live with kindness and self-compassion towards ourselves even when it is really hard. Working with people struggling with Anxiety, Trauma and Eating Disorders I have a profound understanding of the suffering my clients endure. Everyone’s experience is unique, so I focus on creating a safe welcoming space where people feel heard and understood without judgement. Healing starts with feeling safe enough to explore what’s going on beneath the surface.

I see wellbeing as a process of reconnecting to yourself and coming home – to your body, your emotions and your story in a way that feels possible and empowering. Whether it is anxiety making your tummy churn, trauma skewing your world view or disordered eating making food and your body feel like a battlefield. The goal to wellness for my counselling clients is to help them find ways to cope, heal and rebuild self-compassion. I believe in working collaboratively with my clients, knowing they are the true experts in their lives knowing themselves best as I offer guidance, tools and support. Above all I value kindness – especially towards ourselves. Wellbeing grows when we stop fighting against ourselves and start understanding our needs and feelings with patience. My hope and philosophy to wellbeing for my beautiful clients is to help them build inner kindness, resilience and connection so they can move towards a happier, fuller more peaceful life.