Therapist, author, executive coach, and facilitator

to be the designer of healthy, connected relationships in your life

As featured in:

• 20 years of real-world, hands-on experience as a psychologist, executive coach and trainer
• Registered psychologist (Australia)
• Psychology Board of Australia approved supervisor
• Master practitioner of clinical counselling with clinical supervisor designation (Canada)
• PhD from Bond University (Australia)
• EMDR therapy certification (EMDRIA approved)
• Certified in somatic prenatal and birth therapy
• Certified Developmental Model of Couples Therapy (Dr. Ellyn Bader)
• HeartMath certified coach
• Biodynamic craniosacral therapist
• Author BE by Design: How I BE is Up to Me (Balboa Press)
• Certified Forest bathing guide

As for many people, perhaps including you, life has been an adventure of wonderful experiences and connections and some sh*t ones.

My life started with me choosing to blast into the world 6-weeks early, unwanted by an alcoholic father, and wanted and loved by my mother. The 1st month or so was spent in neonatal intensive care unit, 100 miles from my parents, where my father denied my mother visiting me. I missed the crucial bonding and attachment time and my mechanism to ‘make it in the world’ was to be a lovable, good, quiet baby. My survival mechanism  manifested through the years into being a people pleaser, I was a mix of anxious and ambivalent attached, lacked healthy relational boundaries and quite frankly didn’t know my ass from my elbow in ways to build healthy, secure, genuine connection to others.

I lived from an agitated, hypervigilant nervous system, dysregulated most of the time. School years were at times tough. I was shy, low in confidence, had debilitatingly low self-esteem and self-worth, and that attracted bullies. I had an unhealthy relationship to food and to my body and as I entered my late teens was a target of the odd predator or two. I didn’t know how to communicate my inner pain, fears or needs. I didn’t know how to lean into support.

The theme here is I didn’t know how to connect to myself or others in ways that were good for me. I often attracted harmful people into my life where my needs were not met and I didn’t know how to set boundaries and connect in a vulnerable way – I had not had an emotionally and psychologically safe learning ground. It’s no-ones fault, as the old adage goes, hurt people, hurt people.

I started to wake up, get curious, have an impulse to understand why I would f*ck up a really healthy marriage. This curiosity led me far and wide – guided by the teachings of many modern spiritual greats. I threw myself into the teachings for several years, and after having what I now know was only an intellectual, surface level understanding of the wisdom being shared, I naively ventured into the world of dating. Low and behold I attracted one wounded, avoidant attached, emotionally unavailable person after another. The pinnacle of my relational self-destruction was a brief and very impactful connection to a very toxic individual who turned out to be THE BEST thing that ever happened to me.

This was my punch in the face wake up call, my enough is enough, my ‘hell no’ – never again experience. 

 I was so fortunate to discover the somatic-based teachings of the late John Chitty and  Anna Chitty (Biodynamic cranial sacral therapy) and the late Ray Castellino (somatic based pre and perinatal therapy) in the USA.

These two-year teachings saved my life and gave me the skills, confidence, and know-how to be embodied, track my nervous system, connect to myself, trust connection to others, be present and available emotionally, and respond rather than react. 

Fast forward 10+ years and I have had life-enhancing relationships with conscious, warm, open-hearted, vulnerable, relational beings. People who can stay present when ruptures unfold and create emotional safety. The history and old imprints are still there, and pop up for sure, but I am more skilled now to track, be present and stay connected – not all the time, I’m still a work in progress and I choose to grow every day. I’ve befriended myself, I’m mostly self-forgiving and I get up every day and fight the good fight for more vulnerability, more connection, more courage, more loving boundaries, more repair after rupture, more returning to the Blueprint of relational health with people, activities, and the wider community. The imperfection of being human gives me strength and drives my passion to support others to integrate what hand were dealt and thrive in connection to self and others, by design.