Founder’s Insight

It wasn’t until my forties, when I began doing deeper inner work, that I recognised how much I had lived through. Emotional neglect, sexual abuse, car accidents, miscarriages, emotionally abusive relationships, shocking deaths and the murder of people I loved. Family dynamics that repeatedly triggered my hypervigilance. Parenting my parents for much of my life, and watching my mother die.

Through it all, I raised my children, built businesses and held things together for so many. I thought carrying on meant I was coping. Looking back, I can see how often I was numbing what I didn’t know how to feel, with alcohol, medications and whatever helped me get through.

When I became sober, much of what I had pushed aside became harder to ignore. I needed to create space for real healing if I wanted those patterns to change.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy became a turning point. Alongside other therapeutic work, it helped me understand emotions and responses that had never made sense to me. There were around six years of my childhood I could not remember. As memories and fragments surfaced, I explored them with support, allowing space for clarity, grief and uncertainty. Layer by layer, I began to recognise what I had been carrying and why I had done the things I had done in the past.

I began to see connections between my experiences, my triggers, my hypervigilance and the ways I had tried to escape pain. Behaviours I had judged in myself started to make sense. But understanding it was the first step, then came the question: How do I change and stop letting it shape the rest of my life?

This is why I’m so passionate about changing the beliefs and habits that keep us repeating old patterns. For me, reparenting myself has meant changing the way I speak to myself, setting boundaries and letting people be disappointed. It’s learning to recognise familiar chaos and pause when I feel the urge to numb or distract myself in times of distress. In that pause, I get to ask what I actually need and choose differently.

I know from my own shutdowns that wanting to move forward and being able to are very different things. Sometimes we need substantial help before we can take a small step. Compassion and meaningful support matter, and for me, psychedelic-assisted therapy changed my life. The work around it has mattered too: grieving, integration, somatic support and changing relationships and environments that kept reopening old wounds. It’s taken years, but I’m so grateful I never gave up.