I’d like to share a my own story of transformation with you….

   I was born in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and as a child, growing up in a Catholic family on a farm, I felt deeply embedded into nature, community and divinity. Beyond my siblings and parents, my sense of kinship extended to the animals, trees, and fields around our farm. Nature was my wider home; my playground, my sanctuary, and an extension of my being. I knew that the animals were sentient, and I felt called to care for and protect them. I felt like I belonged, and that God held us all in a greater presence, and I remember feeling moments of great love, joy and peace. 

   This began to change when I became a teenager. Violence began to spiral out of control in my home country and within my family home, my parents became increasingly estranged. Civil war then erupted both in my home and in the wider country of my birth. Personally, I also struggled deeply with who I was, and felt deeply unworthy and inherently wrong. I became disillusioned with the Catholic Church and detached myself from it. By the time I was in my early 20s, I was depressed, caught in cycles of suffering, addiction, and despair.

     In my late 20s, I remember sitting by the side of the Mediterranean ocean in southern Spain, at the peak of  psychological pain, when I had an epiphany. Witnessing the ocean, the sunset, and the majesty of nature, something broke through and I began to experience a deep sense of peace and presence in nature around me, and a feeling that things would be ok. This ignited a thirst in me, to get to the bottom of my suffering and discover what was really going on, beneath the surface layers of life.

    I spent the next 15 years immersing into wisdom traditions that each brought me a different piece of the puzzle, and brought me gifts that I carry with me to this day. I immersed into Buddhism, Yoga, breathwork and depth psychology, into somatics and Shamanism. Through these approaches, and the wise teachers  that I met along the way, I could deeply heal from the traumas and wounds that underlay my surface level life.

    This transformed who I was as a person; my ego identity loosened and I began to know my true nature as Soul.  I began to experience life more magically; it became ripe with meaning, and renewed with possibility. I enrolled in professional therapy trainings and eventually was drawn to a PhD in Psychology and Transformative Leadership in the U.S, to meet and train with some of the world’s leading conscious change makers. Supports and synchronicities began to appear and although life still had its challenges, I felt also that there was a loving presence, that like a great river, supported the flow of my life in ways that I could never have imagined possible. I still struggle with feeling small and not good enough, but I also can hold these parts of myself gently within a greater sense of wholeness, a spacious centre within that has more power and potential than my ego alone.  

    If my life can transform from someone crippled with inner wounds, to someone who is able to step forward and let her soul shine, I fully believe that this is possible for each and every one of us. If an individual’s life can come back from the brink of crisis, I really believe that collectively, when we align with our truest nature, that we can change the trajectory of this world. I know what’s it’s like to feel powerless in the face of collective crisis. Yet, I have learned through my many years of trainings and personal deep transformation, that we CAN radically transform our lives and life around us.

     I truly believe that each of us are born with unique gifts that can make a difference in our world, to become part of a powerful tidal wave of change. Leadership is no longer the terrain of the male lone “hero”, but is I believe a co-creation where together we can support one to stand in the sovereignty of our souls.