Founder’s Insight
This is personal for me. My unhealthy coping patterns began very young, around ten years old. Long before I understood trauma or addiction, I was already learning ways to change how I felt. That is why I care so deeply about looking beneath the behaviour. We see what someone is doing, but we don’t always ask what they have been carrying, or what they learned to do to get through it.
For me, psychedelic-assisted therapies changed my life. Each experience felt like it unlocked another layer, another truth, another blocked memory. Alongside ongoing somatic therapy and practical tools, they helped me build the capacity to make different decisions when I was triggered. But they were not magic pills. I needed time and space to process what surfaced, and support to bring that understanding into everyday life.
I have given up many coping mechanisms and, at times, found myself reaching for new ones. Five years into recovery, I am still working on myself. I still have things to understand and patterns to change. But life has never looked so bright. I am grateful I kept going, even when I couldn’t see what was ahead.
When I feel that pull to run towards numbing the pain, I am learning to pause, recognise what I need and respond differently. Sometimes that means reaching out. Sometimes it means slowing down and giving myself room to feel, rest and heal.
Creating that space has mattered. Healing takes time, and it can be difficult to hear yourself when every moment is filled with demands, distractions or another way to escape. I have had to make room for the work, and for the life I want to build around it.
I also had to build a new tribe, and that was lonely. As I changed, some friendships, places and ways of spending my time no longer fitted. There was a gap between leaving parts of my old life behind and finding people I felt connected to in this new chapter. Building those connections took time. I had to keep making room for new people and experiences, even when retreating into the familiar felt easier.
The early years were hard. There was grief, discomfort and learning how to live without things I had relied on for so long. If you are in that part now, please don’t assume this is all recovery will ever be. There is more life to discover. Give yourself time to reach it.
I want people to have access to information and support I wish I had understood earlier. I want us to question the shame, listen to lived experience and keep exploring what helps.
I cannot promise your path will look like mine. But struggling does not make you less worthy of a good life. Taking longer than you hoped does not mean you cannot get there.
Please never give up on yourself. Make space to heal. Keep asking questions. Keep reaching for support. There may be possibilities you haven’t been shown yet, and a life ahead you cannot picture from where you are standing today.
