My Back Story

My life experience….so far

I started my life exactly where I needed to so that I could be right where I am now. A city in the south of England which has a renowned theatre.
I started dancing classes when I was about 5 and acting pretty soon afterwards. Dancing was an interesting experience, I wasn’t lithe enough to be a ballet dancer, the splits was never anything that my body was going to do however, tap was another matter, I loved it and I could do it. The more complicated the steps, the faster I got, the more I loved it.
Then there was acting, theatre acting. I started taking classes, took exams and got high marks each time – “Incredible focus and concentration” was a common remark. It was always a profound experience and years later I understood why.
I acted at the Chichester Festival Youth Theatre, performed professionally on the main stage and loved it all. It took me to another place, somewhere that was safe to feel, to express, to experience emotions, to have relationships, to speak. Home life wasn’t a breeze, in fact it was very painful. I love my parents (both dead) but they were tricky. My Dad was angry, my Mum was sad and bitter. I spent a lot of my life thinking it was my fault and that it was up to me to make my Mum happy and my Dad less angry and because non of it made sense, I ended up believing I was bad. Not so.I left home at 16 to attend acting college in London. I would’ve left earlier if it had been legal. I was studying, being independent, working and paying my way and yet always feeling out of place. Life was kind of happening but didn’t make sense.
I worked in restaurants, lingerie stores etc. and got small acting jobs. But, “what else is there and how do I get it?” I didn’t really feel a connection to anyone, not my family, not really my friends and totally not myself. It seemed to me that everyone else got along, had friends, understood life and were just going for it, as if it all made sense.
I managed to get myself involved with a guy who drank, turned out to be extremely violent and one night when I was 20 and he was bashing my head on the floor of our appartment, I managed to find a powerful inner strength that saved my life. I found myself running down the street with nothing more than my keys and purse at 2am, with blood pouring down my face. I found a phone box (yes pre cell phones), called a friend I worked with who took me in without any hesitation. I’m forever grateful to her for giving me a safe place to get myself together. A level of generosity that I’d never experienced and has stayed with me forever. Thank you.
Then came my 2CV!!! If you don’t know what kind of car that is, definitely look it up. Mine was a Dolly, red and white and totally adorable and went everywhere with me, roof back, music playing, adventuring all over the place. No men for a while thanks.
I was acting, loving it, waitressing and loving that – I loved the speed, energy, attention to detail, fun and the team energy that waitressing gave me.
Next in my life was the man who became my first husband. A group of us were at a table before our shift started in the restaurant, sharing what we wanted in a relationship. I said ‘I want someone to hug me’ and apparently he fell in love with me right there.
Our life together took us to the middle of France – a place that time forgot – where we bought a farmstead that had been empty for 70yrs. There wasn’t a lot more than walls (1m thick granite) and some corrugated iron on the roof. Our first winter was the coldest winter for 50yrs – a romantic and challenging experience after the city of London. We literally had to dig ourselves out of the house, through the snow and scrabble around for bits of wood to keep us warm. I’d never picked up a screwdriver in my life but I learnt quickly and you couldn’t keep me away from mixing cement, soldering pipes, tiling the roof (best suntan ever) and much more.
After 5 years in the idyllic centre of France, we moved south to be in a town where stuff was happening and closer to the sea. I was also ready to act again. My French was good enough to act with a repertory company and also start working in voice-over. Walking into the booth and recording for the first time, felt like home.

At sometime during this phase, my body started sending me messages. I’d grown up in a family who identified with illness so I’d gone the other way and when this started happening, it threw me. The messages were getting louder and showing up in a way that I couldn’t ignore. The biggest message came via my thyroid and the Dr. said I’d be on medication for the rest of my life. No way!!!! That was NOT going to happen. I’d become rake thin, my emotions were all over the place, out of control and made no sense. I’d be driving along feeling totally fine and then want to smash everything in sight. I confused our cat when he found me curled up on the kitchen floor crying my eyes out in so much emotional pain that I just couldn’t stop.
Was there an option other than medication? Yes. EFT (emotional freedom technique) was to be a doorway into a totally different kind of living. I’m eternally grateful to my then husband for his great research ability and for finding it. We started ‘tapping’ like crazy and then found two ‘experts’. I was gifted with a truly wonderful lady who on our first meeting asked why I was there. “Oh I don’t know, I hate my body, I cry with fear when I make love, I’ve lost a lot of weight, I’ve always wanted to be a boy and maybe I haven’t grieved for my mum, plus I had uncomfortable feelings around my Dad when I was young. Other than that, I don’t know”. In my innocence, I had no idea what these sessions were going to reveal and how it would totally change my life.
After each session I felt as though I’d plucked a leaf from a tree but nothing that stuck. One day I pleaded, “Whatever it is, just show yourself. I want to know what the root is.”
Then wham, October 2008 my life changed forever!!!! The lady and I had been using another technique (TAT) which I loved and I guess a part of me felt safe and strong enough to start revealing the secrets that I’d hidden my whole life. The details aren’t important but it involved trauma in the womb, physical abuse for 3yrs when I was 5 by a Dr, who was a family friend, rejection from a teacher and one of my parents when I told them what was happening and it wasn’t until we moved house, that it stopped.
In the moment when the memories started showing themselves, the lady said, ‘We have a choice, you can put it all back and close the door, or we can keep going’. In my head (I think) I replied, “Are you f*ing kidding? This is awful but at least my life makes sense now”. So we kept going.
It was a crazy time because I couldn’t believe it was possible for anyone to ‘hide’ such trauma for so long. There was a lot of mind mess and pretty ugly self talk. My saving grace was writing. I filled piles of books with words. Whatever came out I wrote down, I drew down, I scribbled down and I cried intensely. None of it made sense and yet it was as though I was coming out of prison. So many lies, so much pretending, so much confusion, so much sadness.

Over a period of 10 months, my life shattered into pieces. The past that I thought I’d had, turned out to be a lie, the present fell into shreds and the future I thought I was going to have, disintegrated. The ‘rememberings’ became too much for my then lovely husband to handle and our marriage ended in 2009. It was painful, challenging and at the same time full of grace. The whole experience was an intensely amazing gift because it turned out to be the beginning of me finding out who I was.
August 2009, I was walking alone in the forest and through deep sobs, I heard an inner voice ask, ‘So if you didn’t have any responsibility, any business, a husband, no constraints, what would you do?’. Without a breath, I replied, ‘Well I’d go home, pick up my backpack and go to India’. What?!!!!!! What did I just say?!!!…….And just over 3 months later, that’s exactly where I found myself. My world had become unfamiliar, ground that had felt solid, was falling from beneath me and going to India was exactly what I needed. Nothing familiar, nothing to rest back on – I was in total free fall and the only place to go was inside.

My Grandfather was my hero and I remembered him sharing his experiences of India with reverence and love. This is where I was supposed to be and this was where I was at home. Everything was so different and yet totally familiar. My soul had come home to help me come home – whatever that meant.

Through grace, I spent 3yrs on and off in India in 2 ashrams. She (India) shredded me to pieces, put me in a liquidiser, turned me upside down, shook me out and I let her do it time and time again. India tore me apart constantly. It was an emotional Tsunami and no matter how messy it looked, I knew deep down that it was exactly what I needed and I knew that it was everything. I was gifted with 4 days of bathing in the Ganges and being so at home.

Whenever I started focusing on life ‘outside’ of me, something brought me back inside – broken ribs, a broken toe – all guiding me to what was important. I remember sitting with a group of westerners and at one point I opened my mouth to tell a joke. Something stopped me. I heard, ‘Why are you telling that joke? Do you even find it funny? Who’s joke is it anyway?’ Then deeper questions kept coming and I realised that I’d allowed myself to get so deeply lost that I didn’t really know what food I liked, what music, what clothes, what I believed, nothing. In that moment I decided to be quiet until I knew and promised myself that in the future, I would only share from my experiences, from my truth. It might not be anyone else’s truth but it would be mine. I was silent for a long time and I loved it.

That moment took me back to a ‘satsang’ with a Swami when I first arrived in India. He was sharing from a place that I’d never experienced before. He didn’t try to convince, to convert, nothing. He shared because that’s what he was there to do and he shared only what he’d experienced – that was his truth. He didn’t even care if you agreed or not. I felt as though he was looking straight through me, no gauze, no pretence and absolutely no doubt. What we did with it, was up to us and that’s what I wanted for myself. Welcome to silence.


Life was then divided into 3 parts – pre Indian, post India and India itself which was truly the greatest experience of my life.
In between two India trips, I spent 6 months in an ashram in Canada. I got time on my Canadian visa and it turned out to be the perfect confidence builder for to day to day living. I heard a constant voice reminding me, ‘If……..can do it, so can you’, so I did. I was laying the foundation for life ‘outside’ and I needed it desperately.

Back to India with my last day being in Mumbai in 2012. It was important to complete the circle and find peace with the city that had been pretty traumatic when I first arrived in Dec’ 2009. I was boarding the plane thinking, “This can’t be it, I must be coming back,” but the minute I sat on the seat, the connection was cut and I knew that for quite sometime, India and I were complete.

I returned to Montreal and found a little appartment. October came, I couldn’t work out why I wasn’t going to India and then my Dad died. Now it made sense. Over to Spain to sort things out and then to visit friends in France, only to end up with a broken ankle after being catapulted and trodden on by a horse. The 3 D’s – Death, Divorce & Damage in a period of 2 weeks. It was intense but after my time in India, it was also peaceful and freeing. With both parents being dead, there was a feeling as though I had no ceiling to keep me grounded, like a balloon without a string. Then little by little, I found that string inside of me.

Montreal and a winter on crutches. Fascinating experience that allowed me to meet so many exceptional people. When you’re moving slowly, the whole world shifts and allows people in to help. Spring came and I got the internal message that it was time to move. “When?” I asked. “August”. “Ok,” I replied. “Where?” “Vancouver Island.” “!!!!!!!! What? Not even the city of Vancouver? You’re taking me to an Island?” “You need to be surrounded by beauty, by the sea, by trees.” “Ok.” Through connections from India, I found a co-let in Victoria that fell through 2 days before I felt when the person called saying their plans had changed and it wasn’t available. Ok, I thought, I’ve got two suitcases and a backpack and I’m starting off at a consciousness retreat so worst case scenario is that I backpack around the island for a while. I felt so at ease and knew it would all be ok.
As it turned out, I became ‘Mary Poppins’ to a lovely lady and her two children for 3 months after the retreat. Then I knew it was time to let them re-find their family core and I was offered a house sit ‘up island’, north of Victoria. It was perfect. I felt as though I was starting a new life and revealing the me that had hidden. It was full of sweetness in so many ways. I could do what I wanted, when I wanted. I spent many hours in meditation continuing to uncover extremely intense emotions connected to my childhood, relationships, marriage, family etc. Each uncovering created more inner space and peace.

Then Hospice came into my life. What a gift of grace to volunteer there. Being at the bedside of someone who’s transitioning is for me so deeply sacred and a true privilege.

I was also continuing my voiceover work creating studios wherever I went and then one day I was invited to accompany a friend to the choir she sang with – Motown, Soul, Gospel – which is basically a soul and body workout. This is where life gifted me with a surprise I never saw coming and …….the rest will follow.