A little about me..

My teachers along the way…

Life is always sending you people to teach you lessons; family, relationships, co-workers. Then there are the chosen teachers, certain soul contracts that are guided to connect with you, teaching the hardest lessons of all. The heart breaks! (Full story of that one in my chapter of Change Makers). Immense gratitude for my Ancestors & my Great Grandmother Kelly Anangu medicine woman from Uluru in Northern Territory Australia My fathers matriarchal side were Aboriginal and connected to the Wonnarua community in NSW Hunter region of Australia. (they have all passed now).

Academically I have never stopped studying with one or three courses every year. I completed my Bachelors in Social Science and Behavioural Science adding Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) and so many other small courses it would be a bore. I found that my best teachers were the clients that I worked with over the last 20+ years clients will always push you to learn more about yourself and about others. I didn’t like the idea of being a “psychologist” because it was very limited to how you could really help others. And ongoing talk therapy didn’t seem like a solution to me. 

It was time for a change so I went into the Health & Fitness industry and opened my own Fitness & Health Boutique. Became qualified as a Health Coach and Personal Trainer well before social media made everyone a super star so it was a perfect business model teaching me business and community skills for people who hated going to the gym. Of course once a therapist always a therapist so I was able to help people with the eating habits and unhelpful patterns, linking them to low self worth and often childhood traumas.

I had always been a spiritually connected person growing up. Raised in very strict religious surroundings and yet also very unsafe (ironic yes). I questioned the authenticity of every church sermon I was forced to listen to and I think intuitively as a child I knew the system had holes in it. It felt like a big facade everytime, but my mother’s faith was unbreakable and I remember conforming to her ways because my visions and the things I questioned scared her.

So it seemed only natural that as an adult I would reconnect with the spiritual life that was calling me, even if it was through kicking and screaming the whole way. My life had many heartbreaks and I would always pick myself up and dust myself off as though it would all be ok. Eventually though by the age of 48 everything came crashing down around me. Relationships, my family as I new it, my finances, my career and of course my health. This was my wake up call! 

Its a BIG story with lots of twists and turns, the book is being written and will be published by mid 2025 (thats the goal). Plant medicine was the beginning of this long healing process but not the only thing. Understanding the power of energy and cleaning out your trauma was the biggest and most valuable lesson of all. I chose to use plant medicine to do this because thats what called me  – but there are other ways. 

So this became my new adventure. Turning my life around to where it is now  -most would say I’m a completely different person. I started studying again of course, now I have added Trauma informed psychedelic integration coach to my list but also MDMA therapy and psilocybin space holder to my experiences. Great gratitude to my teacher Herberto Garcia Shipibo Onanya from YosiOcha in Iquitos Peru who I study with and continue to study with probably for many years to come.