Peace was always my greatest longing, but for most of my life I went looking for it in all the wrong places.

I searched for Peace in all the wrong places, because I was on the run. On the run from a story deep inside me, formed through the trauma of abandonment in the earliest part of my existence, that insisted that I wasn’t enough, just as I am. That story owned me, held me hostage, wrapped me in a cloak of shame.

I believed I had to somehow justify my existence. So I set out to find peace by proving my worthiness through worthy causes. I became an angry peace activist. Fighting for the underdog, fixing on the outside what felt broken on the inside. Rescuing others, whilst neglecting my own needs.

I also sought peace through perfecting, performing and pleasing, attempting to find belonging and approval through external validation.

But it seemed that no matter how hard I tried, it - I - was still not enough. I was deeply entrenched in the hamster-wheel of never enough.

I numbed my pain through many addictions: rushing, pushing, working myself to exhaustion, co-dependent relationships and partying hard.

Spirit stopped me in my tracks many times and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I would soon hit a dead end if I carried on living my life the way I was.

Yet, in my stubbornness, I wouldn't listen.

Yes, I made some small changes. I began a modest self-care and yoga practise, but many of my destructive patterns persisted.

I was still on the run.

Then in 2011, the world as I knew it, ended.

My beloved mother died suddenly and tragically. I lost my family home. The toxic relationship with my father hit an all-time low and broke down.

I suffered post-traumatic stress alongside my grief.

All the while I was trying to keep up with increasing demands in my career and to form a deeper relationship with my new partner, in a city where I had no friends or family of my own.

The gift of my circumstances was that I woke up. I began to study many spiritual teachers. I allowed myself to be held and supported by healers and guides. I embarked on a journey to heal my life.

Little by little, I pieced together my fragmented past and began to see clearly how most of my decisions, for as long as I could remember, had been dictated by internalised shame passed on through generations.

Setting myself free from what had been, meant I could create my future any way I wanted.

I trained as a Transformational Life and Leadership coach. I re-connected with joy and intuition.

I discovered that I desired, more than anything, to become a mother. It had been my best-kept secret all those years when my life didn't belong to me.

But I wasn't getting pregnant. And my belief in scarcity came flooding back - why was I unable to achieve what everyone around me seemed to be able to, with seeming ease? The old familiar fear of not being enough, and unworthy of wonderful things- came to haunt me yet again.

Eventually, my successful career came to a halt due to fertility treatment. My whole life now centred around trying to achieve my singular goal. I tried every advice, read every article.

I had, once again, attached my happiness, my ability to fully experience peace, to external circumstances. Outcomes that were out of my control that, yet, I still tried to force. My life became contracted.

I needed to stop. Stop to fully learn my lesson, so that I could rise to my highest purpose.

It wasn't until the heartbeat of my unborn baby stopped, that I finally stopped.

Shortly after, I was told by doctors that I would never be able to birth my own healthy, living child in this lifetime.

That's when everything became still. And quiet.

Perfectly quiet, so that at last I would listen.

Listen inwards to who I truly am, beyond my human incarnation.

As I lost almost everything that I held important in my life, I found the real truth of who I am: Love, Light. 

The Universe had a different plan for me and I surrendered to it.

I learned who my true teachers in Love are, and it was revealed to me that radical gratitude is the miracle that re-shapes our story, that gives us the gift of our lives back, that allows all of our lives to be magnificent. From start to finish.

I learned that absolutely nothing and no-one on the outside can make me whole and complete.

I learned that Peace begins with me. With Love. With knowing that not only am I enough, but that I AM, in fact, Love.

I was the one I had been searching for, just as you are the one you have been searching for.

In 2016, I was guided to create an online platform - an Academy for Lightworkers - to heal our core wounds, return to Love, and live our highest purpose through our abundant heart-led businesses, contributing to the healing of the world.

It quickly grew into a vibrant, thriving community anchored in Love, Peace and Mother Earth connection, enabling healers, coaches and wellbeing facilitators of all kinds, to create our own legacies of light.