I grew up in a home where keeping the peace was survival. Where "good girl" wasn't a compliment - it was a requirement. Where my sense of self was built entirely around what other people needed me to be. I didn't know that's what was happening. I just knew I was very, very good at reading a room.

I married young, moved from Cape Town to Chicago, and had two beautiful kids. After a decade, the marriage ended - but the abuse didn't. It escalated. I spent my 30s and 40s raising my kids as a single parent while the emotional abuse, financial abuse, and bullying continued from the outside, and my nervous system collapsed from the inside. Hypervigilance. Anxiety. Insomnia. Crippling fear. Depression. I numbed with a busy social life, going from relationship to relationship, and a glass of wine every night to quiet the chaos inside me.

A full decade after my divorce, I discovered Pete Walker's work on Complex PTSD. That cracked something open. I found Polyvagal Theory, Internal Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing, attachment science - and I didn't just study them. I lived them. I did the deep, sometimes uncomfortable, life-changing work of healing from the inside out.

Today I am genuinely, solidly okay - and then some. I have a voice. I have boundaries that live in my body, not just my head. I married a man who actually sees me. And in late 2025, we moved to Cape Town - my hometown - to build our life here.

That's why I do this work. Because I know what it feels like to be stuck in patterns you can't think your way out of. And I know - because I've lived it - that it doesn't have to stay that way.