I’ve had a lot of new people follow my content lately so I thought it was time to re-introduce myself! 👋🏼
The woman I am today has run a business as a coach and energy practitioner/Reiki teacher for 21 years. Alongside that, I spent 18 years as a parole officer across London, Sydney and Perth, specialising in serious family violence.
I’m in an incredible, loving and supportive relationship with the best human I’ve ever met. 🥰
And most days I’m happy and confident in life (I say most days, because being in perimenopause defo throws a spanner in the works haha!) 🔧
But it took a long time to step into my true, authentic self – about 40 years to be honest. I remember hitting my 40th birthday feeling the best I’d ever felt about myself and my life, but it took a shitload of work to feel that way. 😮💨
Between 17 and 38 years old, I had four long-term serious relationships with men who abused me mostly mentally, emotionally and financially. There was very little physical abuse and because I was never hit, I actually never considered that I’d been physically abused at all.
Knowing what abuse looks like doesn’t automatically protect you from experiencing it, especially when love, hope, attachment and your own unhealed patterns are involved. 🥺
I was cheated on and conned by my first love. I found out he was having an affair with a 54-year-old for the last couple of years of our relationship – when I left him I was 21, he was 26.
Her kids were older than him.
When I found out, he shrugged it off as “online fantasies” and kept making me out to be paranoid and crazy when I started questioning the red flags popping up throughout the last half of our relationship. He had everyone fooled – my parents loved him and considered him like a son. A very charming con-man. 🚩
They’re still together, 25 years later… so I wasn’t crazy after all. 😜
I spent the next 5 years single as I didn’t trust anyone for a while… I focused on my friends, university, my career and a shitload of partying.
My next relationship was with a man who was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He was very unwell at times, and I found myself taking on the role of his carer while starting out my career as a parole officer.
But alongside his mental health struggles, there was also abuse. He cheated on me, manipulated me, gradually isolated me from my social circle and tried to choke me during a stay in a psychiatric ward.
I spent so much time focusing on his needs that I completely lost sight of my own.
By the time I left, I was burnt out, depressed, living with chronic pain and felt like a shell of my former self. 🐚
I moved to Australia after I left him at age 29 and then fell in love with my next partner of eight years, moving from Sydney to Perth to be with him and becoming an instant step-mum to a three-and-a-half-year-old boy. We broke up seven times.
Like many people in abusive relationships, I found that leaving permanently was way more complicated than just deciding to walk away. He was coercively controlling, emotionally and financially abusive, and I left that relationship $53k in debt with my house in mortgage collections.
I was relieved when I left that relationship but the next was an absolute whirlwind with a Jekyll and Hyde type that broke my heart so badly I lost all trust in myself. 🫥
I found myself at 38 terrified of what came next. I’d spent since my early twenties doing so much healing and personal development work yet there was a missing piece, I couldn’t understand why I kept attracting (and staying with) these types of relationships, or why I struggled so hard to stand up for myself.
I was apparently a strong, intelligent woman – with a long career working in corrections, mental health, addictions, psychology… who had assessed and supervised perpetrators of serious family violence and could spot all the red flags for others, but when I was emotionally invested in someone I didn’t give up easily and sought all my validation from outside sources.
My parents’ relationship is on a pedestal for me – they adore each other and are still married. So why didn’t this role modelling translate to my own life? 🧐
I kept wondering what I was missing, and it took a long time to realise it was self-worth and self-love – and even longer to figure out the underlying reasons.
Instead of taking on another relationship which was just another project, I turned MYSELF into the project – and called it Project Self Worth. 💞💫💞
I focused solely on building my self-worth, self-love, self-respect, self-esteem and self-trust – using as many coaching and healing techniques as I could find.
The effects were subtle at first, then more obvious. I started this project in 2016, when I was still two years away from ending my eight year relationship.
The first thing I noticed was that the growing empty feeling around my solar plexus area (the area of confidence and self-esteem) started to feel like it was closing up. I felt happier, even before my external situation had changed. 🌀🙌🏻
Then I started noticing I was more assertive in my relationship, standing up for myself without needing to spend hours thinking/worrying/stressing about it first.
Then I became ready to leave my abuser and finally ended it (without feeling the need to go back at all). I still hadn’t done enough work on myself and attracted another toxic relationship but one that ended after eight months instead of eight years.
At 38, I met the love of my life, a strong, healthy, emotionally intelligent and stable man. 😍 💪🏻
And then I had to do a shitload more work on myself to allow his kind of love in, because I wasn’t used to being treated that way at all.
I’m so grateful to myself for never stopping, because now I know this is what love is meant to be like.
Hot Fiancé and I are getting married next year, and to me it will feel like a culmination of all my hard work paying off. 💍 👰♀️
You don’t become confident and self-assured overnight – you become that person through the choices you make every day.
It’s worth putting in the effort to become your true best self and live your best life. The best time to start was ages ago, but the next best time to start is now. 🤩
If you’re reading this and recognising parts of yourself in my story, I want you to know that your past doesn’t have to be your future.
You don’t have to have everything figured out. You just have to start choosing yourself, one small decision at a time. ☝🏻
These days, I give away the playlist I put together during Project Self Worth for free. Comment/reply LOVE if you want it and I’ll send it over to you.
If you’re new to my page, welcome… I hope you enjoy sharing my journey with me. I know that reading others’ stories helped me on my own journey, so if even one person feels inspired through reading this, it’s worth the pain of the past.
Much love,
