Growing into a young woman in my teens, I had a sense that becoming a woman was something special. I couldn't wait to get my first period, and was fascinated with my changing body.
During my adolescense, a lot was happening in my family and life. Feeling quite easily influenced, I deciced to go on the pill at age 15, as all my friends were. I was also terrified of unwanted pregnancy, and thought that this was "part of being a woman".
Little did I know that it actually disconnected me from the most amazing part of myself.
I got off birth control and fell in love with my womb (again) when I was 27.
I hadn't felt this deep connection to myself since my 15th!
I did trainings to learn more about the feminine cycle and yoga for the female body.
When I was 29, I got pregnant unexpectedly, and miscarried at 8 weeks. This experience felt like a portal of initiation. It brought me deeper into contact with my womb.
I started offering women's circles, womb yoga classes, one on one sessions with women, helping them through their conception journeys, pregnancy losses and womb challenges. I worked hard at starting my business, whilst trying to navigate many big life transitions and changes.
The shift..
Into that year, I found myself collapsed into bed with excrutiating period pain, needing to cancel my yoga class. From that time, I also started to experience dizziness, brainfog and intense fatigue and overwhelm. I had no idea what was going on with my body.
I realized I was burnt out, and my body was screaming at me. I also received the diagnosis of Adenomyosis (cysts in the wall of the womb) after an ultrasound of my womb. I made this mean many things, and it burnt my whole world to the ground.
I felt angry, frustrated, upset. I thought: "How could this happen to me? I am supposed to help others heal". I felt broken.
I jumped into all the things to "heal" myself: dietary changes, supplements, affirmations, changing my mindset.
But everything I tried, lead me more OUTSIDE of myself and away from myself, rather than within.
My healing started when I started MEETING MYSELF where I was,
rather than following another "protocol out there" for healing.
I realized that trying so hard to be perfect - at being a woman, having the perfect womb - had actually lead me further FROM myself and my womb.
LETTING GO..
The past years have been all about letting go of all the things I thought I had to be, live up to, achieve.. and drop back into REALNESS.
I started really listening to my body, learning about my nervous system and its connection to (chronic) pain and symptoms, and allowing all of my burried emotions to have space to share their longheld grievances and hurt.
I am now in a place where I LISTEN. I then listen again, and again.
I am learning to live from a deeper place of reverence and acceptance for myself.
I am learning that REST, joy and play come before achievement, and that there is nothing I need to "prove", "fix", "maintain" or "uphold" to be safe and worthy in the world.
Through all of it, my cycle, being a woman, and Cyclical wisdom has been my greatest ally, and I thank the Universe every day for bringing her wisdom to me.
What am I here to do?
I am on a mission to bring the experiences I've had, and the things I've learnt, into my work. To advocate for a world in which we meet ourselves where we are, with softness and surrender, rather than forcing.
We are not here to be perfect. We are here to be real.
With INA, I want to offer a place for women to feel safe to really come Home to themselves and their own bodies - their Inner Nature - to their innate rhythms.
Not a version that "looks good on Instagram", or has the most perfect story, look, feel, but their own, real, human & fabulously feminine and imperfectly beautiful bodies, that all have a story to tell - if we take the time and space to truly listen.
