When I look back, it’s so clear to me that the keys to my future are held in my past...
MY STORY
As a child and found fulfilment in freedom, friends, and time in nature. I loved travel and was happiest in some far flung, awe-filled place. I loved the space and freedom of beauty of the surroundings of my childhood home. If only I had realised how much I knew at such a young age?
Life evolves. We fit into society, to school groups, family groups, we meet expectations, we shrink to fit in and the space to be us slowly slips away. Sometimes it feels like we grow up to become small.
The journey with my body started early on. Experiencing depression, inflammation and other health problems from secondary school set me on a lifelong journey of asking questions, discovery and often slipping into a resentful war with my body that would occupy much of my time.
My adult life was often led by what feels now like sleepwalking into what I felt was “expected” or would be considered “sensible”.
I felt that joy, excitement and fulfilment were meant for others and my path was “to do the right thing” and find joy in a club night, a pub trip with friends or occasional holiday.
Adult life turned into family life, I got busy and those moments that were there to supply joy seemed so suddenly squeezed out. Instead, I felt like an extra in my own life…like I didn’t fully exist. How is that even possible?
My health was in crisis…but I carried on. “I should be able to deal with this stuff”, “if I was strong enough, I would deal with it.”
By my second child I was able to get a diagnosis and finally had it confirmed that I had an autoimmune disease (on top of already diagnosed hormone problems). Equal parts relief for some understanding around the problems that had dogged me for so long, treatment (after a few more battles), but also the question – why? Why me?
My journey into midlife served me the answers to these questions…and so much more…
As Rumi says – “If you desire healing, let yourself fall ill.”
This quote is so unbelievably resonant in my journey.
My early midlife provided a beautiful melting pot of chaos, in perimenopause, job loss, relationship breakdown, career upheaval that would put me in my biggest health crisis yet. Really the enormity of it was the turning point in my career, health, dreams and the very fundamentals of my life. Everything had to change.
From this place, I embarked on a journey of deep healing and discovery that would touch every aspect of my life.
It started with my body – starting with my hormones, but over time going deep on nutrition and movement. I also introduced much needed self-care, rest and time to myself…things that I had long ignored and deprioritised in my life.
No longer could I exist in unfulfilling work, so I started the journey to retrain as Coach. I had no idea what a monumental step this would be in my own healing journey, let alone how it would shape my work-life. Making connection to long ignored parts of me, I was able to send love to aspects of my personality that I’d shied away from. I started to see how much the past had really impacted my present and it became clear that I had been experiencing complex trauma brought on by aspects of my family life and early experience. My lifelong experience with depression and anxiety and autoimmune disease were a direct result of this trauma.
My healing journey has encompassed all the work that I now share with others. Huge amounts of body-based work, awareness and understanding, coaching, re-patterning building self-trust and trusting my intuition and enormous amounts of compassion and love.
Everything changes when you start to give yourself the same love and admiration that you’d give to a much-cherished friend or loved one.
If you’re a Gene Keys or Human Design fan, you might appreciate this (I do love to dabble in this work.) It tells me my deepest purpose in life is to manifest the gift of transmutation. I believe my life has been about transmuting my greatest pain to my greatest growth, for myself…but also for others. It really does get to be beautiful, expansive and wholly felt.
As Rumi says, I had to first fall ill before I could experience the most incredible healing and take it into the world.
Katy is an ICF ACC Coach and Certified Body Oriented Coach having studied with both a leading ICF accredited coaching school (Optimus Academy) and the Somatic School and having completed many hundreds of hours of both study and coaching sessions. Her passion is for supporting healing on a mind, body and soul level and she continues to explore, develop and discover in this world as well as in her own lived experience.
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Somatics comes from the Greek word “soma” which means “body” and focuses on the human being as an intelligent whole. Where modern day coaching techniques have leant towards the mind, somatics encompasses all areas of our lived experience and the rich data found in the Bodymind.
Our trauma, negative past experiences, emotions, and chronic stress are held at physiological level and thought alone cannot drive you to a different place. In fact, when we’re in stress, access to our conscious brain is shut down and hyper-sensitive neuroception takes over and picks up messages of danger, causing our nervous system to shift into fight or flight mode and the systems of anxiety to persist.
With somatic coaching we get to tune in to the individual’s patterns through the body and then can start the work to reshape, rebuild and re-organize in a way that changes their experience of life.
