Get to know me

I don’t know about you, but the “about” page is usually the second thing I look up when I’m interested in someone’s work; to give me a bit of a flavour about the person behind the offerings.

So I thought I’d give you a bit of a longer introduction into who I am and what led me to the work I do today.

I grew up in a family that required me to be independent and grown up from a very young age, with A LOT to hold. From early on, I learnt to mother myself and “make sense of the world”.

When I was a teenager, I made a pact with myself to live as consciously as possible, so that I could slay the ‘demons’ passed down from my mother line. Over the next 30 years, I put so much effort into constantly “bettering myself”.

I started meditating when I was 15 and became a Buddhist in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition when I was just 19 – and for the next 25 years, this was my path. Fully immersed, I spent years practising, traveling the world, building Buddhist centres and working closely with my teachers. I started with the highest, most transcending teachings and I learnt so much.

Many years – and many challenges, joys and life transitions (including starting life over in a new country, becoming a step mum and eventually, a mum myself) later, I was strong, I could hold my own, but I pushed through life with a clenched jaw and stubborn determination (hello fellow Capricorns).

I was working so hard on being a good mother and in my own mind, failing every day. It was a downward spiral.

I realised that this new phase needed different medicine:  More simple, more earthbound, with more self-compassion. It was time for deep connection to nature and plant knowledge, as well as my own cyclicity, the wisdom of women in circle, small rituals of beauty (rather than the long travels and retreats of the past two decades) and most of all, REST.

For the next 15 years (and ongoing), I immersed myself deeply into the world of plants and the work of women’s rites of passages and cycles. I learned about the life changing value of deep, conscious rest and pivoted from teaching children and teenagers to supporting women to call themselves home by connecting deeply to themselves and nature. In other words, I teach the medicines that I use every day myself.

Today, I live in the countryside north of London with my family; my husband, my two wild and beautiful daughters, sometimes my stepsons, our dog and chicken, surrounded by fields and sheep.

Our house is old, with never ending things she requires us to do, and welcoming – we love to create community around us and have regular gatherings, celebrations, temazcals (sweat lodges) and workshops here.

Not all of life is perfect – it never is, is it? – but I feel a deep sense of connection; with myself, with the women I sit in circle with, with the beautiful medicines of menstrual cycle awareness, rest and cacao. These medicines are holding me as I meet the next of the women’s rite of passages: menopause.

If you feel a connection and would like to learn more about my offerings, please have a look here.