My Story
MY STORY
My Story - Nothing will hold me back
Following a life-threatening car accident in my 20s, I finished my university degree while pushing through multiple surgeries with the courageous vigour and determination of youth.
I started my career as a property valuation surveyor in Ireland and Belgium. I competed internationally in university student horse riding competitions, continuing to follow my passion for horses despite a severely damaged arm and locked in shock and emotional expression.
Following untimely redundancy as a valuation surveyor, I trained to teach English to non-native speakers in mainland Europe, where I excelled as a teacher of Business English in the pharmaceutical industry. I was astounded at how different cultures allowed me to experience personal growth, responsibility and freedom to succeed compared to my upbringing.
In 1997, my body said NO to the excessive hours working in a ‘giving’ profession. My body went into shutdown. I was confused and devastated…great partner, excelling career, horse riding six days weekly, a bicycle as my transport, social events, gym and fitness….the perfect ingredients for burnout when my nervous system was in ‘functional freeze” – simultaneously one foot on the brake and one foot on the gas!
The truth is that no matter how much I did, I always felt a sense of aloneness. I had no idea about reaching out for support or having the capacity to accept support, trust support, or even know that it was okay to have a balance of giving and receiving.
It was time to surrender to my body. After months of telling myself how long it would take to recover, my healing happened when I let go of any opinion on how I ‘should’ recover. I discovered that my body knew the way, and I had to learn about who I was and why I felt so held back. I learned to listen to my unmet needs and to take myself seriously. After taking off the masks I did not know I was wearing, I had to’ rebrand’ myself.
I returned to Ireland to change my way of life. I learned how to slow down, listen to my body, know how a boundary felt, and understand why my social engagement system became overwhelmed when I did not feel safe. I met wonderful people on this path and learned so much about what it means to be vulnerable in chronic pain and how to reach out for help. I lost ‘friends’ who could not understand why the bubbly party girl could not show up. I was caught between the woman I was meant to be and a child whose nervous system was trapped in ‘alarmed aloneness.”
I wanted to help horses, then realised it was me looking for help. Animals were my only safe bonding nervous systems. They loved me as I was and gave feedback on my input of connection. Craniosacral therapy was presented to me as a way to deal with my chronic back pain and frozen shoulder; this led me to the world of compassion and self-healing. I excelled quickly as a craniosacral therapist and worked in multiple intensive therapy programs in Europe and the USA. I opened a craniosacral therapy clinic in Adare, Co Limerick, in 2005.
I have studied and continued to learn the hows and whys of healing from the inside out. I help people link with unconscious patterning and blockages that inhibit the freedom to be authentic. I now understand that most internal blocks are caused by disconnection in our early relationships, even from conception.
My story speaks to early psychological trauma and how it impacts our core identity and sense of self. Becoming a good child and never being a bother to anyone meant I had to suppress my life force, like living in shackles. I had no idea the disconnect between myself and my body’s communication. It was trying to say, “Hey, take a breath and feel yourself. You DO exist, and you ARE worthy.”
IoPT work has been the trauma training that closes the circle for a formula for what it takes to heal. Let’s connect to heal.